Microsoft Corp vice president and number three executive Paul Maritz, once thought to be a possible heir to CEO Bill Gates, is relinquishing the majority of his day-to-day operational responsibilities and will take on a lesser role at the company. Maritz, the head of the software giant’s development group, will now become part of a new technical advisory team reporting to Gates. The company insists he has no immediate plans to leave altogether, but admits that he may only be around through the end of the year when his current commitment is up. Maritz first joined Microsoft in 1986, after five years at Intel Corp. Operational responsibility for his group will now be passed to David Vaskevitch, the vice president in charge of distributed application platform technology, who now reports to Maritz. รก
