Bill Gates reportedly backed Ballmer’s decision to let Windows president Sinofsky walk

The palace intrigue at Microsoft (MSFT) just keeps getting more interesting. AllThingsD reports that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer received the backing of Microsoft cofounder and chairman Bill Gates in his decision to let former Windows president Steven Sinofsky leave the company. The reason that Gates and Ballmer were reportedly willing to let Sinofsky walk sounds very similar to the reasons why Apple (AAPL) allegedly pushed out iOS chief Scott Forstall: That is, he was supposedly a hindrance to cooperation within the company. As AllThingsD tells it, Ballmer and Gates want “to better allow various units work together more closely going forward.” And an unnamed Microsoft executive told the publication that Sinofsky wasn’t fitting in with Microsoft’s need for “creating strong areas of integration among all our products.”