Kara Swisher at Re/code:
Satya Nadella, the quiet and self-effacing Microsoft enterprise chief, prevailed over much splashier outside candidates and was named CEO of the software giant today.
He is only the third CEO since the company’s founding, replacing Steve Ballmer. The first Microsoft CEO, of course, was co-founder and chairman Bill Gates.
Given the circumstances, I think this is the best pick they could make. Satya — the man who has presided over the revamp of Azure and cloud services at Microsoft, pushing those technologies into the most critical facets of their business like Bing, Office, Skype and Xbox.
At the same time, Bill Gates will also be coming back to Microsoft to watch over this new era. Hopefully he can let Satya do his thing while giving employees a much-needed morale boost.