“It’s very hard for someone at his age, who has built a company with that much success and with continuing challenges to really walk away,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard’s business school. “He will never be a titular leader.”

As he spoke in his office, Mr. Gates was joined by the two Microsoft executives, both veteran technologists, who are succeeding him. Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer, and Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, agreed with Mr. Gates that despite significant industry challenges from all directions, Microsoft is at a perfect historic juncture for Mr. Gates’s departure and the first stage of his withdrawal from Microsoft has been reasonably seamless.

“The weaning process inside the company is inevitable,” said Mr. Mundie, a computer scientist who began his career developing minicomputers and supercomputers before joining Microsoft in 1992.

The greatest danger, according to all three executives, would be if Mr. Gates continues to make decisions while not staying deeply involved. He will remain chairman.

“It can’t be a situation where he’s expected to suddenly, magically come up to speed,” said Mr. Ozzie, a software designer who developed a software collaboration tool called Notes for Lotus and then started Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2005. “You know, did you see the 20 announcements last week that Google did, Yahoo did, Cisco did?”

For his part, Mr. Gates said he planned to remain deeply involved in a few areas indefinitely.

“Other than board meetings, there’s not much in terms of regular meetings,” he said. “It’s much more sitting down a couple hours a month with Craig, sitting down a couple of hours a month with Ray.”