Microsoft Visionary Is Taking A Year Off -- Nathan Myhrvold Left Out Of Reshuffle

One of Microsoft's most influential and colorful executives will begin a leave of absence July 1, further indication that the company's strategic reshuffling is still in flux.

Denying a report he was being forced out, Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold said he will take a year's leave to pursue personal interests.

"This is 100 percent my own decision," Myhrvold said yesterday. "The only pressure I've had is from Bill (Gates), trying to get me to stay."

Myhrvold said his post will remain open and he plans on returning to Microsoft. But company insiders questioned whether Myhrvold, whose flamboyant style and inconsistent track record drew controversy within Microsoft, will be back.

If Myhrvold does not return, it will further punctuate the end of the 1990s Windows era at Microsoft. Brad Silverberg, Microsoft's "Mr. Windows" during the decade the company rose to dominate personal-computer software, told the company in February he would not return after more than a year on sabbatical and leave.

Silverberg remains in touch with Microsoft as a consultant, a role Myhrvold says he also will play during his leave.

Time magazine is reporting in its June 7 issue that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's president, sought Myhrvold's departure as part of a sweeping reorganization he is engineering.

"I have not met with Steve in months," said Myhrvold, who was hired by Ballmer along with Myhrvold's younger brother, Cameron, in Microsoft's 1986 acquisition of Dynamical Systems Research, the Berkeley, Calif.-based company the Myhrvolds had helped form.

"It's an ugly thing to try to refute, because there are occasions where people are pushed out of companies," Myhrvold noted. "But if I called Bill tomorrow and said I'm calling the whole thing off, he would be very happy."

Two years in the making

Myhrvold said he has been talking for two years with Gates and Rick Rashid, head of research at Microsoft, about taking a leave.

He sent an e-mail to Gates, Ballmer, the executive staff and Microsoft's research division explaining his move, saying he plans to search for dinosaur fossils in Montana this summer, "take my kids to Paris and London," oversee work on his multimillion-dollar house in Medina and read.

"The fact is, I want to do these things because they are fun and interesting to me. I'm being selfish," Myhrvold said.

He also said "My relationship with Steve (Ballmer) has been, and remains, great." And he says Time did not give him the chance to discuss his plans before running what he termed "this smear."

"I would rather he continue his work at Microsoft, but I support his decision to take a much needed break and explore his passion for science," Gates said. He called Myhrvold an "invaluable contributor to Microsoft, the technology industry and to me personally over the past 13 years."

From black holes to road kill

When he joined Microsoft, Myhrvold was the company's most educated dropout in an industry where unfinished educations at the time were practically a job requirement. A quantum physicist who studied black-hole theory under Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University, Myhrvold likes to joke that he has more degrees than a thermometer - including a master's from UCLA and a master's and doctorate from Princeton.

Myhrvold took summer 1984 off from Cambridge to work on a software project, intending to resume with Hawking in the fall. The project grew into Dynamical Systems, however, and the company's lead program, Mondrian, caught Ballmer's attention.

Frizzy-haired, loquacious and energetic, Myhrvold quickly rose through Microsoft's executive ranks, working on projects involving OS/2, then a joint IBM-Microsoft operating system, and networking personal computers. By 1990 he convinced Gates that Microsoft, to be competitive into the next century, needed an advanced research laboratory similar to legendary Bell Labs and Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.

Myhrvold soon became known as Microsoft's techno-visionary, a reputation he embellished with long periodic memos on the state of the industry and future trends. His Sept. 8, 1993, essay, "Roadkill on the Information Highway," warned of Microsoft's demise if it did not move into digital information technologies such as interactive television and telecommunications.

Who's minding the store?

Myhrvold's wry sense of humor and turn of phrase made him a media favorite, gaining him magazine profiles, including one in Fortune that depicted him laughing on its cover, wearing a beanie with a miniature propeller.

The outside attention did not win favor internally at Microsoft, however. After a feature story about Myhrvold's hobbies appeared in The Seattle Times' Pacific Northwest Magazine three years ago, several senior executives questioned how he balanced his outside interests with the demands of "Microsoft hours."

The article described a two-week trip through Montana in a Hummer, guest-chef appearances at Rover's restaurant, a wine-tasting tour in France's Bordeaux region, a three-week stint at a Parisian cooking school and other pursuits such as bungee-jumping, car racing, mountain climbing, skydiving and fossil collecting.

Contributing to the who's-minding-the-store concerns was the research division's failure to bring products to market. While Myhrvold extolled interactive television, Microsoft almost missed the Internet.

"It wasn't entirely Nathan's fault that the company almost missed the Net," a veteran industry executive observed recently at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology conference. "But it happened on his watch, and people thought he should be held accountable."

With the rise of the Internet, Myhrvold's star lost some of its luster, though Gates remained a stalwart defender of his friend. Myhrvold's appointment as chief technology officer in 1996 was widely seen as a demotion.

Dinosaurs and bread dough

In the past year, insiders say, Myhrvold has spent less and less time on Microsoft business. Advertisements he did for a private-jet manufacturer and a magazine article he wrote about his acquisition of a jet continued to roil the waters at Microsoft.

A report in The Wall Street Journal that Myhrvold was fly-fishing in Mongolia was widely repeated by critics who claimed Microsoft was losing its focus.

The Journal 10 weeks ago reported that Myhrvold was considering leaving Microsoft. He denied the story, but speculation recurred when he was not included in a Gates-led Business Leadership Team, announced March 29 as part of a company reorganization.

Myhrvold said he finally decided his outside pursuits were too distracting.

"I've managed to fit all I do into my vacations, weekends and other spare time," said Myhrvold, who added that he spent "all of one week" fly-fishing in Mongolia.

Myhrvold will turn 40 in August, but said "this isn't some big midlife crisis thing. I do want to do some of these things now, though, rather than wait till retirement."

Myhrvold, who is fascinated with dinosaurs, last year published a paper with leading paleontologist Philip Currie on dinosaurs' ability to crack their tails like whips, sending out supersonic booms that served as signals and mating calls.

The paper was a finalist in last year's Computerworld Smithsonian Awards for innovation. Myhrvold is working on another paper to be published later this year. He also expects to spend time this fall at the Institute for Advanced Study, associated with Princeton.

Myhrvold, a gourmet chef and wine lover, is building a home that has a more than 1,000-square-foot kitchen with a French-made range, and two pastry ovens. He expects the home to be finished in about a year.

The worth of his Microsoft stock holdings is about $275 million.

Visions coming to pass

Ironically, Myhrvold's leave comes when the company is said to be on the verge of several products reflecting years of research.

Moreover, several of Myhrvold's predictions appear to be gaining revived credence. His 1994 prophecy that voice telephone calls would become "free" in the sense that data traffic would overwhelm voice communications is on its way to becoming true, say industry telecommunications experts.

And interactive TV is enjoying renewed attention with high-profile deals such as Microsoft's $5 billion deal with AT&T a month ago to provide software for cable-TV set-top boxes.

Paul Andrews' phone number: 206-464-2360. E-mail address: pandrews@seattletimes.com

--------------- Nathan Myhrvold at Microsoft ---------------

1986: Joins Microsoft when it acquires his company, Dynamical Systems Research, for $1.5 million.

1988: Coins expression, "Windows Everywhere," to describe efforts to popularize Microsoft's operating system.

1989: Becomes director of advanced development with responsibility for "identifying new technologies, which may have commercial impact."

1990: Persuades Chairman Bill Gates to set up an advanced research division at Microsoft.

1993: Campaigns for development of interactive television. Writes a portentous essay, "Roadkill on the Information Highway."

1994: Leads acquisition of SoftImage, a Montreal-based developer of 3-D computer animation software, for $130 million.

1995: Co-authors with Gates and journalist Peter Rinearson a book, "The Road Ahead." Also serves as contact for initial talks between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems over licensing the Java programming language.

1996: Becomes chief technology officer in company reorganization.

1998: Becomes a finalist with paleontologist Philip Currie for a Computerworld Smithsonian innovation award for their paper, "Supersonic Sauropods: Tail Dynamics in the Diplodocids." Microsoft sells SoftImage for a reported $209 million. Myhrvold is featured in ads for a jet company and purchases his own private jet.

March 1999: Is left out of the new Gates inner circle, the Business Leadership Team, in Microsoft's reorganization.