According to sources familiar with the plans of the company, despite Mulally expertise, he was not the right person for the job, mostly because of the very different business segments Ford and Microsoft come from. Alan Mulally on Tuesday to The Associated Press officially withdrew candidacy for the CEO of Microsoft and announced that he intends to stay at Ford, at least throughout this year. The same sources told Reuters that the likely internal candidates are Satya Nadella, Stephen Elop and Tony Bates, while analysts for external candidates cite Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg, VMware's director Pat Gelsinger and Pivotal's CEO Paul Maritza.

The next meeting of the Board on which Microsoft should be talking about the new CEO should take place at the end of this or next month, according to unnamed sources within the company.

[Ed - We are not surprised that Mulally has officially withdrawn. According to information we saw he was never really interested in the job anyway. Microsoft and analysts that were hopeful he would eventaully change his mind are now going to down play this happening. We are sure all of the people claiming Mulally was the next top guy at Microsoft will pick their next favorite in the hopes that their guy (or girl) will be picked. We wonder how this announcement will impact Microsoft stock and who will be the next media favorite.]

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