Try to image Star Wars without Darth Vader. Or how about Gotham City without the Joker? Harry Potter without Voldemort?

Everyone loves a good villain. Their crazy schemes, egotism and sheer capacity for evil help define the worlds they exist in and move those worlds along in ways that the protagonists just can't accomplish. This is way Microsoft needs to bring back Bill Gates.

Things just haven't been the same since Bill left us two years ago to spend his time doing philanthropic work, thus ruining his image as the IT world's King of the Evil Empire. True, he's still chairman, but he's left the daily grind behind him. The only thing people complain about these days is whether their list of favourite movies was inadvertently released to the public because of Facebook's privacy policy.

The industry needs Bill as much as Microsoft does, too. Microsoft through the 1980s and 1990s was the driving force behind IT. Bill brought graphic user interfaces (GUIs) to the masses, which in turn pushed the demand for better processors. He led us onto the web with the ubiquitous Internet Explorer (IE). He made desktop publishing easy thanks to programs like Word.

He also promoted nerd rage like no one else. You could plans for several good breaks everyday thanks to Windows' ability to crash consistently. IE had to be trust-busted — but not before it destroyed Netscape — and Microsoft's office products caused a mass exodus of graphics artists and illustrators to Macintosh, where they could use Photoshop and Quark in peace and quiet.

You may not have liked Bill and his company, but they pushed the industry. That's not something you can say about Microsoft today. The company still dominates the operating system market — and with the success of Windows 7, that isn't going to change any time soon — and the Xbox is still incredibly competitive in the gaming console market. Elsewhere, it doesn't seem capable of doing anything but playing catch-up.

Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer's dream of seeing people "Binging" information instead of "Googling" it has crashed and burned. Since its launch last year, Bing is being used by only about 3.5 per cent of internet users according to Alexa.com, while Google's reach is closer to 42 per cent.

Zune, Microsoft's answer to the Apple's iPod, has never taken off. Since its launch five years ago, the player has only barely broken into double digit market share. There's been no response from Redmond to the iPad. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is Verizon and Google that are likely to produce the first iPad rival, not Microsoft, who's hopes of promoting a touch-screen, tabletop PC look pretty silly in comparison.

Browser hit

Even Microsoft's once seemingly impregnable lock on browser share is taking a hit. Once estimated at 95 per cent, IE now accounts for only 60 per cent of the market. That's still dominant, but Google's Chrome browser has risen almost 400 per cent in only one year to take a 6.7 per cent market share.

There has been a lot of speculation about why Microsoft has moved from a dominant roll to a player struggling to keep up, including in-fighting and a bloated corporate structure. Microsoft certainly started its downward spiral while Gates was still involved in daily operations, but it hasn't helped that Microsoft lost a little bit of its identity with his departure.

Many of the most successful IT firms take on the personalities of their leaders. Apple has Steve Job's persona of cool and edgy. Google is smart, techy and even a little idealistic, much like Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Microsoft under Gates was nerdy but innovative. Balmer doesn't come across as either. He looks more like a rugby coach than a leader of an IT company.

So come back to the dark side, Bill. The industry needs you.