Steve Ballmer retirement: Microsoft should have been broken up in 2000. [Slate]

Except from a timely Dan Gillmor Microsoft reality check

"Microsoft understands this now, and Ballmer has been a much better CEO over the past decade than his worst critics claim, especially given the constraints of the behemoth organization he has been running. But the company has labored under a handicap beyond the normal inertia of giant enterprises and Microsoft's unwillingness to tamper too much with its biggest cash cows. Its settlement with the Bush administration looked like (and was, for the most part) a cave-in by the government, but it had one widely unappreciated effect: Microsoft spent a decade under a consent decree that slowed it down in a tech world that was moving and evolving faster than ever."

Steve Ballmer retirement: Microsoft should have been broken up in 2000.