You couldn't pay me to work for Ballmer
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Not me.
I've had 3 career phases: BMS, DMS, AMS, Before Microsoft, During Microsoft, and After Microsoft.
I remember how cool things were back in the good old PHP/VAX/Microdata/CPM days before Windows fucked everything up. Then I suffered with every enterprise who had adopted all things Microsoft. Now that people feel we actually have choices again, I don't ever want to look back. Any wonder I feel like a kid again?
Or, 'Don't get cocky, kid!'
Steve Jobs has Google + Android to keep him busy repeating history anyway.
Poorly disguised gloating is poorly disguised gloating.
I most definitely DO NOT want that back, a neutered microsoft steered by a geriatric scatterbrain happily tending his ancient cash cows is fine by me. Google are plenty good enough to take the juggernaut role Microsoft used to occupy, and they have the added plus of not fucking up my corner of existence while they're at it.
Ballmer may not be the best visionary, product person, or have a good nose for the market.
But I really don't think MS could do anything to compete with the Internet era, and its results would likely be extremely similar with Gates in charge.
Also... let's not be revisionist. Gates was there long enough into the Internet era for us to know what he thought/how he responded. His attitude and approach was quite similar, and in some ways worse.
He was much less complicit to web standards on both the client and server sides.
These days, MS's intranet products retain this approach (Sharepoint), but its Internet ones are really good citizens and saying all the right things (Azure, PHP friendliness. Silverlight is old-school, but still less borg-y than stuff released in Gates-era). It's only that we have absolutely no reason to use the MS web-stack, and (rightfully)have trust issues that explains their lack of popularity.
So yeah... Ballmer is a dork. But MS's gradual demise is a natural effect of the Innovator's Dilemma and the Internet.
I am a firm believer in his be patient for growth not for profit. Yet most really big online companies went for growth before profit yet manages at least partly to still be in business.
I have my own theories but wonder if anyone knows where he stands on companies like FB, YouTube, google (who didn't really make money before later in the game. Is there a need to revise his theories?
For example, if MS is making $15B a year in client products right now. And over time, against Google and such, that number will drop $1B/year until it hits $3B. Or they could accelerate that drop, such that it drops $3B per year, but they can generate $1B dollars per year by eating their lunch.
While it may be "fashionable" to be the cutting edge company generate $1B/year on some cool technology. It's actually prudent to fight against the new technology as the incumbent for as long as you can. And try to find totally new markets, rather than eating your own lunch.
That's exactly why it is a "dilemma," and not a "lack of vision."
Specifically, think about Office. MS could have released a web-version of these at a price-point that competed with other web office stacks. Doing so would have put them in position to succeed in the Internet world, but it would have gutted their Office profits in the process.
Given their cost structures are set up around those profits, no sane business person will make that decision. Hense, the dilema: you can see you are going to die to companies who change the rules, you know what you would need to do solve that, but the economics of doing that would mean anybody who really tried would be out on their ear.
Questions to Jobs were firstly about Apple and secondly about Google; with questions about Microsoft almost always having a historical "back in the day" feel about it.
Questions to Ballmer were largely about Apple and Google.
Apple and Google are just far more relevant. What are you gonna do? Ask Ballmer about Kin and Xbox?
( /tongue-in-cheek )
(just don't know what a Kin is and looked it up)
Bill Gates is an amazing man in so many ways. He may have had an evil edge in business, but that ruthlessness is what brought him success. It would have been neglectful to his shareholders to act in any other way.
Now he works full time spending his fortune on making the world a better place. Truly a great man.
Remember, he amassed his fortune through monopolistic practices that valued control and subjugation of competition over product innovation and creation of value.
Is it possible to both be a notable philanthropist and also not engage in business practices that perhaps run counter to the generous philosophy of philanthropism?
Big fucking deal, welcome to business. Jobs/Apple would/is doing the same thing every chance they have. When Jobs starts to spend his billions for charity (yes Steve you will be obligated some day) are we going to complain because he threw his weight around ala MS in the industries Apple dominated? No, we'll hopefully be able to thank him for his huge gift to humanity just like we should be doing to Gates right now. I'm sorry but whether or not Flash is allowed on the iPhone doesn't mean a a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
When you're saving lives around the world by the millions suddenly what browser shipped with your OS back in the 90's looks like a whole lot less important.
p.s. Apple has been investigated for improper options grants. That is a far cry from breaking monopoly rules.
It would be hard for Apple to reach market shares as great as MS, if they do you will see them hit equally hard for breaking monopoly rules.
>It would be hard for Apple to reach market shares as great as MS, if they do you will see them hit equally hard for breaking monopoly rules.
By which you mean, not at all (US government dropped the ball on the case against Microsoft)..
It seems common among the extremely wealthy, actually. I live in a city where the names Carnegie and Mellon are plastered over all kinds of public resources.
People love seeing their name. It's just the way it is.
It's not that IE is preinstalled that's the issue, it's that after IE beat Netscape (by being awesome) it was stagnant for years, and lack of standards support has caused developers tons of headaches over the years.
Safari, on the other hand, has excellent standards support, thanks to WebKit.
In other words, completely different...
My thoughts exactly -- and spending time at MS, that is the MS lingo, at all levels. I think the janitorial staff only speaks in business pseudo-speak.
He didn't say anything worthwhile either, just weasel words.
"He merely said that whether it's a tablet or a laptop or a desktop, it's still a personal computer. Fair point."
If the best reaction you can muster from a question such as the one posed to Ballmer is "fair point", then the speaker hasn't said anything of any significance or depth.
Contrast that with Steve Jobs' answers, and the difference couldn't be more clear. Either Jobs is far more skilled at veiling his true intentions, or he's a lot more introspective. Personally, I enjoyed listening to Steve Jobs' answers a lot more than I did Steve Balmer's. Ballmer just sounds a lot more like your typical corporate "talking head".
"Right now we [Microsoft] are selling millions and millions and millions of phones per year, Apple is selling 0 phones per year. In 6 months they [Apple] will have, by far, the most expensive phone in the market place."
"I tried to take notes on one in a meeting with me yesterday. That was fun. It didn't go very fast."
Note taking in meetings is clearly not the USP of the iPad though, so Ballmer's comments are just a cheap shot... no substance.
And he seems to dismiss his competition with hyperbole.
...it's a wonder he's the CEO, really.
AAPL is '98-now() and MSFT is '89-now(). If he wanted to compare MSFT to AAPL, put them on a single comparative chart.
If he wanted to compare Gates to Balmer, use NASD-100 to factor out (very roughly) the environmental differences.
Sure Steve Ballmer doesnt seem to be all that successful as MS' CEO. They are still very profitable, make some great products and have some really smart people there. I would argue its probably middle managers and bureaucracy that is the bulk of their problem. I suppose a more charismatic leader would probably try to fix that though.
Would I prefer seeing him back at MS or in his current role? Without a question, I would like to see him use his fortune to address bigger and more pressing problems like poverty, disease, and malnutrition.
I have no qualms about his 'evil genius' side - he ran a business, a wildly successful one at that, and I think you can fairly attribute the widespread use of PCs to Microsoft (I'm a Mac). But the world could make better use of a visionary, compassionate, and generous (isn't that ironic how his current role contrasts with his past business image?) person like him.
I think they were the first company in history worth a trillion dollars if I remember correctly.
edit: or it was a talk about it being the first big T company, can't remember correctly, it was a crazy time with madness like DOW 36,000 and fantasies like that.
To be honest though, I don’t think the linear comparison over that whole time period is an especially informative chart though. The logarithmic one is better (replace "linear" with "logarithmic" in that link), with a much more meaningful slope.
Basically what we see is Microsoft stock went absolutely crazy between 1986 and 2000, doubling 9 times over that period (an utterly ridiculous sustained average doubling time of about a year and a half). Since 2000, Microsoft stock has dropped by half, mostly a drop during the year 2000 and stagnation since.
By contrast, Apple stock roughly stagnated between 1988 and 1993, and then, worse, dropped to between a quarter and a third of that value by its rock bottom point in 1997. After Jobs returned, between 1997 and 2001 Apple caught a big upswing and then a big downswing, the up presumably aligned with the colorful iMacs/iBooks and so forth, and the drop presumably due to some combination of broader economic forces and slowdown/uncertainty to do with the OS X transition, etc. Apple stock has been going nuts since the beginning of 2003, doubling 5 times (!) in the last 7 years.
Seriously. Is this just me noticing that?
I noticed something, too.
[Edit. I previously ID'd a specific condition. While I stick by my observation, and would comfortably say the same thing in a hallway conversation, it's probably not cool to say it in a public forum. I'm in no way important or a shareholder in any company involved in this discussion. But a commenter below got me thinking. HN is a widely-read, influential place. I don't want my passing observation to be responsible for anybody's pain.]
It's better also if you can spell their names properly; "multiple sclerosis", a disease of the nervous system, isn't specifically describable as a neurological issue, however does cause many.
It's also just as likely that he was tired after having to travel and then appear on stage to talk about his competitors.
I'm trying to think how i can edit the comment, while preserving my main point (that there was something distinct there, but it seemed less like drunk/under the influence, and more like ________).