"You like it? Geee honey, I'll get you one for Christmas". This is the comment Bill Gates is thought to have made before deciding to take over of Imperial College Union. With this latest acquisition comes the promise of yet more rushing changes to the Union.

ICU is actually a collection of warring tribes, with the CSC vs CCU battle fuelled by copious amounts of brain-washing, boredom and an anti-CCU Felix legacy; so much so that some of these tribes would rather commit suicide than carry on with this stupidity. This culture will undergo a radical reversal. In Microsoft, the numerous autonomous parts, like Hotmail and Xbox, spend more time in collaboration than in contest. The collaborative effort to create a "rich user experience", particularly with Windows and IE, has been so successful that Microsoft has been seen by some lawyers as "too successful".

While in the Union the custom has always been to attempt to shut down parts seen as "problematic", Microsoft will be instilling their time-honoured approach. With early versions of IE and Windows, when these products looked pale, Microsoft made sure to get the good people involved in them to ensure by version 3 they were world-beaters.

Microsoft also realise that the successes and failures of their various divisions reflect on Microsoft as a whole. When Hotmail security is compromised, it is usually Microsoft Security that is blamed, not Hotmail. In the same way, the Union will learn to realise that that the performance of any particular "tribe" is a reflection on how students view the entire Union, not how students view IC Catering, for example.

Microsoft understands the Cardinal Aim of the student union is to "to advance the education of its members and promote, without prejudice, their welfare at all times", with clubs and other amenities secondary aims. Rather than have them as stripped down society-like stubs, Microsoft desires strong empowered CCUs/FUs that are proactive in fulfilling the Cardinal Aim, though the use of their resources of Clubs, DepReps, Almuni links and other facilities - so much so ICU, from atop, does not have itself have to overly worry about the Cardinal Aim.

Rather than over-work himself by running everything centrally, the strength and empowerment of Hotmail, Xbox, Windows and the other parts that do the real work is what allows Bill Gates to sit from aloft, drink his champagne and remark - "jolly good": running ICU he would want it no other way.