This morning’s Observer column…

It had to happen sometime. Even so, it comes as a shock to realise that Bill Gates will be stepping down from the company he co-founded with Paul Allen in 1975 and has dominated ever since. But we will notice the difference less than we would have done if he’d quit 10 years ago, because Microsoft has changed. So has the world around it – with the result that the company is now less important in the computing universe than it once was…