Interesting take from the Washington Post on Microsoft’s CEO choice.

While Google founder and CEO Larry Page boasts about his company taking “moon shots” and Zuckerberg promises to “move fast and break things,” Microsoft has fallen behind the technological curve after underestimating the importance of Internet search more than a decade ago and reacting too slowly to the rise of mobile devices during the past seven years. Meanwhile, the sales of personal computers running on Microsoft’s Windows software are shrinking.

and

Just as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs would never have considered working at IBM Corp. in the 1980s, today’s entrepreneurial whiz kids scoff at Microsoft’s overtures.

“Going to work at Microsoft could make it look like you are going back to the dark ages,” says Richard Metheny, a management coach for the executive search firm Witt/Kieffer in Chicago. “It’s a well-entrenched business that has had trouble lately figuring out how to play in this new world.”

and

Microsoft “is like a car that still has a full tank of gas, but it’s just an old model,” Carrey says. “There are a lot of great tech executives who yearn for that kind of challenge, especially with a bucket of cash to make acquisitions and do some really fun, cool stuff.”

I can’t imagine anyone thinking this about Apple. Apple is just a little younger than Microsoft, but has the forward-thinking DNA built deeply within its bones.