Buried in an NYT piece about the midway point in Bill Gate’s two-year departure plan from Microsoft’s daily operations, some comments about Google’s chances in the mobile phone market. According to John Markoff, Gates rejected the idea of Google as a successful competitor in smartphone software; Microsoft has about 10 percent of that market. Gates: “How many products, of all the Google products that have been introduced, how many of them are profit-making products? ... They’ve introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So, you’re now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they’re going to have the world’s best phone and it’s going to be free?” His contention: compelling software will win. “The phone is becoming way more software intensive. ... And to be able to say that there’s some challenge for us in the phone market when its becoming software intensive, I don’t see that.”

Well, no, but he doesn’t have to. Disruptor Google can probably make life difficult whether or not Microsoft sees victory a possibility—and without actually winning.