Slashdot Mirror
Ballmer: 'We'll catch Google'
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Ballmer was all about honesty when briefing partners in Sydney yesterday. Microsoft CEO's confessed the software giant's .Net strategy has come to a standstill, says he's accepted SQL Server's shortcomings and vowed to keep fighting search giant Google."
Good luck with that. They have to first overcome the problem that people like Google and don't like MS.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Ballmer (from the article):"We can't support open source, but we can support interoperability," he said. (what does that mean?... I can't count the number of times I've not been able to lace up some Microsoft technology to some other technology... on the other hand, symmetrically I can't count the number of times I have easily been able to lace up some OSS to other technology.... (I know that doesn't qualify for tautology..., but it illustrates a point))
Ballmer (from the article, re lack of SQLServer spatial storage capabilities):This may be addressed in the next release [of SQL Server] in 18 months, Ballmer said, but conceded he "really didn't know"
Ballmer (from the article, re MapPoint lack of expansion into Southeast Asia): "I didn't know we weren't doing well there," he said. "I'll address that with the team vigorously."
So, for all Ballmer doesn't know in this discussion with partners, how much weight will (Ballmer, from the article): "In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy," hold?
Sounds like Microsoft is seeing Google much as they saw Netscape in the past... a threat that is important and trumps all other goings-on on campus. I'm not sure based on what I've seen so far Microsoft can exceed Google's technology, let alone even catch up with it. Writing smart search technology, evolving it quickly, and improving on it is a much more daunting challenge than cobbling a browser together quickly.
Well, if you're slipping into irrelevancy as your OS gets delayed and your dev platforms get ignored because of your (previously mentioned) OS delays, what do you do?
Do you stand around and say "We screwed up, please ignore us forever" or "We're coming back to the top! Really, we promise".
He owes it to his shareholders to at least pretend like they're fixing the problems, when really the biggest problem is that they can't seem to release relevant software on schedule with the desired features. Perhaps the biggest problem for MS is that the new competition has spread their talent far too thin, that they're working on too many projects at once, can't finish any of them, and are suffering tremendously because of it.
It's unfortunate, indeed, that some of the BEST ideas to come out of Redmond still haven't seen the light of day.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
No. He isn't admitting that MS is irrelevent. He is admiting that MS is losing in places, hence has competition, hence is not a monopoly. MS NEEDS to look like they are losing a bit, because when they were winning everything (in the eyes of many people) they were getting attacked.
Saying things like that are a calculated gamble, words like that can send stock prices down, so there has to be a reason for it. "Honesty" aside, it is business.
- In a few years Windows will be competitive with Linux for clusters
- Longhorn will be "supercocmpetitive" with apache.
- One day windows will have a scripting language (msh/monad) as powerful as
/bin/sh.
Is it the case thah people can see through the fud, so they're concentrating on reality? Wow.This has always been Balmer's M.O. He's played this game a hundred times.
"Aw, shucks... There's no point in denying that the horse crap we shoved out the door last year stunk to high heaven. What a big screw up! But look out, because this year we are going to really dazzle you with some great products!"
He's spent his whole career acknowleging that MS has made poor software "in the past" while promising the moon and the stars Real Soon Now.
He's gotta be giddy with laughter over the fact that it still works after all these years.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
They may be able to make up some lost ground with Google, but I'm not so sure they'll be able to catch up. It took them a while to destroy Netscape (who has now reared it's ugly head again as Firefox). That was a single target - a single app that did a single thing. Google is more of a hydra that just keeps on growing new heads all over the place...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
First, Google, despite being the beloved of the geek crowd is Windows-centric again and again. I have working nVidia drivers on FC3, why can't I get an app to surf 3D satellite maps and such? Why is Keyhole for Windows? Is Google going to do ANYTHING with Linux? I don't see them as such darlings, but then I don't have an irrational FUD-based hatred of Microsoft so I am not seizing on them as a battering ram against Redmond.
Second, Portal Kombat is finished. The audience left before there could be a truly gory fatality and left Netscape, Lycos, etc. to figure it out (to the extent that it ever did actually sink in) for themselves that they (the public) didn't care. Why does Microsoft care who searches the web through which engine?
Third, why are people so interested in searching their own desktops? Hello? Anyone remember AltaVista and their search software? Whoopie. I get to have someone else write code so I can waste processor cycles searching my machine for files I should have been smart enough to organize in the first place. Want to help me? Write an app that catalogs every CD as soon as I insert it and then stores the results in a database and make it part of the OS package.
If anything, this is more like Peterbilt saying they're going to catch up with Ferrari. Different markets altogether really. I don't need anyone to search my desktop, Google doesn't write any sort of OS, and Microsoft has never been the search king in my experience. So it's like, who cares?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Microsoft's problem is that they're fighting battles on too many fronts. Instead of doing one area extrememy well, such as search or OS or an iPod competitor, they're fighting a multitude of companies on their own soil.
Microsoft may have the financial resources to throw at these battle fronts, but without public support and without the better product, they have no long term hope
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
MS is to big to become "irrelevent." Many people said the same thing about IBM, and they haven't. Their role in the industry has changed, people no longer call PC's (IBM compatible), but they are still here and large. That is what I see eventually happening with Microsoft. There are way to many smart people working for them to go away. I'll be curious to see how the Intel/Apple thing goes. That could change things, but at this stage in the game I see MS sticking around for quite a long time.
Desktop search is the voice recognition of the new century. It will sort of work, but never well enough to make it worth relying upon.
A nice prediction, except for one problem: Apple users are already using Desktop Search. It's here now, it works, and it's much loved by users. Same thing with Google Web Apps. GMail, GMaps, and Google Search are all here today, all much loved by users, and all wiping the deck with competitors.
Voice Rec was one of those things that we always saw coming, but never saw the reality of. (Although it has gotten into niche applications like voice dialing.) The threats to Microsoft, OTOH, are already banging at the gates (ha ha) and are threatening Microsoft's bottom line. Unless Apple's and Google's growth were to abruptly stop tomorrow, even conservative projections don't look good for Microsoft.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Hardly. It would take more than that to successfully dethrone MS from the Desktop. The following items (not all included, but important, none the less)
Unified Application Architecture
Application Interoperability
Legacy Application Support (Win32)
Desktop Office Software Solution
3rd Party Hardware Support
Game Publisher Support
Seamless platform transition ability for business users
All of these need to be at or above existing accepted Desktop standards before you can reasonably hope to unseat Microsoft.
Think "non-dominant" instead of "irrelevant". And if they're not dominant, they can be irrelevant TO ME. Sure, MS isn't going away, but I'll be very glad when they're not driving the market anymore.
I'm going to go play with Google Earth some more.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Your post was modded funny, but I think you point out a serious fact: Ballmer just isn't up to the job of being Microsoft CEO. That doesn't mean he isn't a smart individual, or very capable in some ways.
Think about Apple, Oracle, maybe even Linux development as managed by Torvalds - What would happen to any of these organizations/efforts without the people who were central to their creation and success? (We know what happened to Apple.) Getting back to the corporate example, as big as these organizations are, one person at the top can make a huge difference, for good or bad. Look what happened to DEC, Wang Labs, IBM, AT&T when the chief exec went pear-shaped.
It's also quite possible to go from bad or mediocre to good - Note Yahoo! before Terry Semel, GE before Jack Welch, Chrysler before Iaccoca. Of course /. is focused on technology, so the tendency is to believe the success or failure of a company is almost completely dependent on the quality of its product technology. I think it is much more dependent on the leadership of the company (like anything else, sports teams, politics, military, etc.) /.-ers post about the various OSS personalities, but discuss Microsoft and Apple almost exclusively in terms of their tech. Gates is a brilliant guy, Jobs is a brilliant guy. Ballmer was never the right choice as Microsoft CEO IMHO, but I don't know who is. I don't know who could replace Jobs, either. I'm sure there are people who would be great CEOs of both companies. I'm guessing Ballmer is on his way out. The big question - What will Microsoft do when it does have the right CEO?
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Ballmer and the rest of the MS folks have been at this game for many years. Every so often, they say something to the effect of "You know, we realize that things are pretty bad, and we're going to change that." But in the end, they never do.
It's just a ploy to make the disgruntled Microsoft users believe that there's a ray of hope, so that they don't abandon ship.
Years ago in the "Windows NT 5.0 Rapid Deployment Conference" (Before it was even going to be called Windows 2000), Jim Allchin stood up and told us all how horrible NT4 was, and effectively that they had "seen the light". 2000 had many of the same problems that he admitted to NT 4 having on that platform. They didn't fix them, they just tried to make us all feel better. And they've done it over and over since then, nothing's changed.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Ballmer may really believe that Longhorn is going to take the world by storm, but my gut feeling is that Microsoft is doomed to irrelevency
The way it was doomed to irrelevancy becuse the Internet was going to become the platform?
Longhorn will be more of the same, with no acknowlegement of the paradigm shifts Apple is pushing onto the desktop and Google is pushing into Internet apps
Microsoft is a weird schizo kind of company. In its core business, it destroy all rivals because it is not tech driven -- it's driven by pragmatism. Competitors waste time money and effort trying to steal Microsoft's cash cow, but the barn is so well managed that they can only look at it from the outside, actually from a trailer park in the next county, where their perpetual motion driven milking machines are doomed to decay into rust.
On the other hand, Microsoft has plenty of Rube Goldberg plans of its own, for things like music subscription services and the like, that are totally tech driven and completely people unsaavy. And they have money to spend on these things. It's like they've corralled all those dangerous geek impulses in a safe area well removed from the barn. It's dreadfully inefficent to spend your time on these things, but sustained compound growth covers a multitude of sins.
That's all in the past though. The thing though that may doom them is coping with maturity. The change they need is not technological, it's cultural. There is no prospect of tech adoption driven growth like they had in the 80s and 90s, where customers needed desktop systems literally by the truckload, and MS could provide software which while never particularly good, was good enough and the cheapest way to equip entire corporate divisions at a time.
(1) It is precisely becuase MS was NOT innovative that customers turned to them. Peple had a big transformation to manage, didn't want anything fancy or expensive to get in the way, and tolerated all kinds of technical, aesthetic and cultural deficiencies along the way. In this situation, it was the rate of technological adoption that mattered more than anything else. Finesse was not required or particularly appreciated.
(2)That problem is obsolete, so MS's corporate culture is obsolete. Notice Google's motto. Bad boys with attitude aren't wanted or admired by MS's customer base.
(3) A tech oriented make-over of MS based on innovation is a fantasy. An infantile fantasy: the kind that you're supposed to grow out of. They have a great business now, they just need to update it for the needs of 2005 instead of the needs of 1985.
(4) To do this, they need to become their customer's best friend, not the devil you know. People now have more time to be skeptical and demanding than they used to.
(5) Ambition is fine in a top dog manager, but it can't go naked. Gates's testy, irritable drive for world domination does not fit the bill, nor does Ballmer's outsized, sweaty antics. Somebody a bit more suave would be nice. Appointing a European might be a good move, not because Europeans are smarter than us, but because it would signal a new, outward looking perspective.
You can see good things and bad things about Ballmer's attitude here. You can't say they're not self-critical. The question is -- are they asking the right questions?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.