Top 10 resignations we’d like to see in the technology world

The usual pre-Top 10 lunch didn't happen this week, which turned out to be a good thing since the theme of today's list became apparent only this morning.

News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, aka the most hated woman in Britain, has finally quit her job. She left, after apparently trying to resign twice before, over the hacking scandal that has dominated the headlines since the scoop from Nick Davies of alleged rampant phone hacking on News International titles.

It had to happen. Brooks has been clinging to power like a rabid weasel but you can't edit a paper and then insist that you didn't know how the stories were sourced. An excuse like that makes "the dog ate my homework" look like the musings of a master conman.

As we were going to press the news came through that Les Hinton, former head of News International, has also quit, citing problems in the UK that he had deemed solved. It looks like Rupert Murdoch really is clearing the decks.

I'm sure that News International hopes the departures, coupled with Murdoch's meeting with the family of Milly Dowler and full page advertisements in the UK press, will draw a line under the issue.

The PR term for these resignations is 'blast wall': something that can be used to take the force of public opinion to protect those higher up.

Chances are it's going to work. A Friday announcement will give minimum news coverage and allow the weekend for things to calm down. Normal business can be resumed on Monday. It looks possible that the key evidence is also missing.

There are a couple of public inquiries to be gone through, but from a friendly government and a prime minister more used to asking Brooks what wine she'd like with her fish course, so these can be managed later.

Some might think this cynical, but in the technology industry we've been used to this for a while. HP had hacked people over management leaks for years, and it played out in a very similar way.

HP's then chief executive Patricia Dunn stepped down, but the rest of the team stayed on and business went on as normal. Nevertheless, the manner of Mark Hurd's leaving was not lost on the industry.

So, since we have resignations on our minds, Shaun and I decided to be devilish and publish a personal list of 10 people we'd like to see taking permanent time off, with a couple of honourable mentions for fun.

Honourable Mention: James Murdoch
Iain Thomson: OK, we did say that these were for fun, but I wanted Murdoch Jr on the list from outrage more than anything and, since News International is going digital, we have a small excuse.

For me, and for much of the public it seems, it was the case of Milly Dowler that really kicked this scandal into high gear. A 13 year-old girl, missing for six months, had her phone hacked and messages deleted so that the investigator could gather more news.

This gave her parents false hope that she was simply on the run, until her body was found.

According to some press accounts, Murdoch authorised a £20m slush fund to pay off the victims of phone hacking. He's now saying that he didn't realise the extent of the problem, but that's an awful lot of money to take a flier on.

Surely the question of who the biggest liabilities were would have come up. For the Dowler family, and possibly others whose only crime was to be struck by tragedy, Murdoch should go.

Shaun Nichols: When the HP pre-texting scandal erupted, there was no small amount of outrage among the press. How could a company do such a thing? Surely no news publication would ever do the same if the tables were turned?

As it turns out, there are unscrupulous people in every profession, and the News International case is a very extreme example. It is becoming quite obvious that the level of corruption and deceit at this company was far beyond what anyone had initially thought.

Hopefully this won't just end with a few resignations. When HP got caught hacking phones it ended up testifying in front of Congress. If nothing else, a few people need to be brought in front of a judge.

Honourable Mention: Bill Gates
Shaun Nichols: This one might not be popular. After all, Gates has resigned from Microsoft to concentrate on putting his vast fortune to use helping to make the world a better place.

But there might just be a very compelling argument to bring the Microsoft co-founder back to the company he made into one of the world's biggest. The fact is that Microsoft needs someone to return it to the forefront of the computing world, and who better to do that than Bill Gates?

Yes, times have changed quite a bit since he first brought Microsoft to power, but there are also plenty of similarities. We are in the midst of a transition to new platforms and there are plenty of smaller firms to be bought.

This sort of wheeling and dealing is exactly how Gates was able to acquire and establish many of Microsoft's biggest brands over the years. Perhaps it's time he came out of his admittedly admirable retirement and gave the corner office one more shot.

Iain Thomson: Come back Bill, all is forgiven. Well, maybe not Windows CE but we'll put everything else aside.

Microsoft needs another visionary. Current chief executive Steve Ballmer is many things, but he's not a technologist and the company needs someone who can see not just to the next financial year, but to the next decade of technology evolution.

Many of us thought that Ray Ozzie would fit that role, and the wave of support he got when he joined seemed to indicate that Microsoft felt the same way. Sadly Ozzie was gone all too quickly.

Gates wasn't the best visionary out there. He completely missed the significance of the internet until it was too late, and underestimated the difficulties of building a valid mobile operating system.

But he had enough foresight to get Microsoft ahead of the game in several key areas, and that kind of vision is sorely lacking in Redmond at the moment.

It was telling that Bill was very influential in getting the Skype acquisition past the Microsoft board. I sometimes wonder whether that may be a deal that turns out to surprise us all.