Ballmer on Innovation

prostoalex writes "Robert Scoble interviewed Steve Ballmer on the topics of blogging, innovation at Microsoft, Microsoft's work with developers and other things. Video is available in WMV format." From the interview: "Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so. I don't think they've done much interesting at all. What about Oracle? I don't think they've done much innovative at all. What about the open source guys? Ah, the business model is interesting but we haven't seen much in the way of technical innovation. People cite Google. Google has done some interesting stuff."

Comments

The monkey man screeches

[CaptainZapp]

"Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so. I don't think they've done much interesting at all. What about Oracle? I don't think they've done much innovative at all. What about the open source guys? Ah, the business model is interesting but we haven't seen much in the way of technical innovation."

That may be all well and even true. But why does Mr. Ballmer remind me so much of glass houses, stones, pots, kettles and the color black?

Re:The monkey man screeches

[Anonymous Coward]

>What about the open source guys? Ah, the
> business model is interesting but we haven't
> seen much in the way of technical innovation."

You have to understand this about Microsoft:
1) They are __not__ a technology company trying
to sell their products. They are a __marketing__
driven company whose products __happen__ to be
technological products.

2) Microsoft doesn't lead. Because they are a
marketing company, they __watch__ marketing __trends__ to see which way the wind blows.
When they think they know which way the market is going, then they will
either:
a) Buy the start up if they can.
b) Make their own (inferior) version if they can't buy the competition.

You have to wrap your head around those 2 points
until you grok the implications.

What are some of the implications?
1) They don't understand the motivation behind
open source and more specifically, free (GPL) software. As a marketing firm trying to sell product where's the money to be made here?

Answer: None. If there is no money to be made
from selling product, then why would you
waste time on it? (You have __got__ to see this
in market droid mode. This question doesn't make sense to ask from a technology point
of view, but Microsoft doesn't live in technology mode, they just visit and harvest from the technology world.)

2. You can't buy out open source software. You
can buy out a start up company or an individual
(like the creator of Gentoo), but that doesn't
stop the competition from using and improving
the software nevertheless.

You can't rip off the software either, in particular, you can't rip off GPL software
and be a leech about it.

So, from a __marketing__ point of view,
there is no "interesting" or "innovative"
software in the open source world, since
like MC Hammer sang it, they "can't touch this!".

I would have said in the past that Ballmer
is just an outright liar, but if you read
the above and grok it, you can see that
to use another a cliche, Baller "just doesn't get it."

--Johnny

Re:The monkey man screeches

[dbIII]

Did IBM out innovate us? I don't think so. I don't think they've done much interesting at all

Things like high temperature superconductivity are boring - visual basic and clippy, those are innovations that are really ... wait, does this guy really believe what he is saying? Microsoft didn't even do any R&D a few years back, and what have they done since they did start R&D that actually is innovative and not just porting stuff done elsewhere to a different platform? I'm sure there must be something (and no folks, optical mice don't count because you could buy optical mice from other vendors before Microsoft had heard of them and put in an order).

Re:The monkey man screeches

[aej17]

Oh for crying out loud. You HAVE to know exactly what he meant. "They" are the people who make the final decisions. "They" are the people "you can't speak for". I am sure that there are people who work at MS who are passionate about their work and are actually nice people. That is not the point. It is obvious from any number of examples over the past two decades that MS, AS A CORPORATION, does not particularly care about either quality of their products or innovation in those products. What the parent post said was dead on.

Re:The monkey man screeches

[antic]

If you seriously think that Microsoft doesn't "understand" Open Source, you're an idiot. They understand it but they cannot ever show any support for it because doing so would concede ground and that territory is profit, shareprice and morale (all things that matter to a company). If there was a way to make equivalent money out of GPLed software, you can bet they'd do it. There isn't (they make more doing what they already do), so they don't. It's that simple.

Suggesting that they don't understand free software is a bizarre POV.

Re:The monkey man screeches

[QuestorTapes]

> Suggesting that they don't understand free software is a bizarre POV.

Actually, I'd say it's pretty much typical. I've been doing a lot of reading lately on conversation and confrontation. Most people seem to argue from implicit assumptions that:

1- my point of view is correct, therefore yours is wrong.
2- since my point of view is obviously correct, anyone who doesn't agree with me probably lacks information.
3- once the information has been provided too them, if they still don't agree with me, they have a problem with comprehension; they just "don't get it."

I've been guilty of that one a lot, myself.

No room for anyone but us

[Just Jeff]

When I read the Ballmer quotes, the first thing I thought was, he is saying that there is no room in the industry for anyone but Microsoft.

All these other companies make products that other people use to be innovative. There relly isn't a lot of innovative room in relational databases for Oracle. They make databases, and very good databases and very popular databases, and they make a lot of money doing just that. THEIR CUSTOMERS are the ones who put those databases to good use.

IBM make a lot of stuff. Most of it is pretty good stuff, and they make a lot of money selling that stuff. It is IBM's CUSTOMERS who make good use of it.

"The open source guys..." Well, they make a lot of stuff too. IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO USE OPEN SOURCE software who put it to good use and who are innovative. Open source allows people a little more room to be innovative. They can aquire it at a lower cost. They can alter it to better meet their specific requirements...

Steve Ballmer believes that computers are a platform for software companies to restrict and dictate what happens there. In that model, customers do not decide what computers do, but software vendors. That's why Microsoft feels the need to compete in every single little corner of the software industry. For Microsoft to (almost literally) control the world, they have to be the sole supplier of software to everyone.

"The open source guys" have a different view.

It's a bit like...

[M3rk1n_Muffl3y]

...asking the Osama Bin Laden about the virtues of Catholicism. Okay, maybe not quite, but I don't think MS are a company who do innovation. Rightly or wrongly their approach has been consistently based on developing other peoples innovations into mass-market products. Such as QDOS, VisiCalc, Navigator, GUI OS (from Apple or Xerox, take your pick). So I sincerely doubt the value of Ballmer's comments on this topic.

Microsoft Innovates like Enron did - with BS.

[standards]

One innovation that Google came up with is that it learned that it doesn't need a figurehead spokesmodel like Ballmer.

Ballmer does Microsoft a disservice by ranting about innovation but not actually delivering innovation. No wonder why theses Microsoft guys are so uncharismatic - people have a distaste for bullshit-slinging horn tooters.

IBM - the inventor of so many basic industry ideas - is declared a non-innovator.

Apple, who brought so many great ideas from the lab to desktop computing, ideas that Microsoft admittedly embraced after Apple delivered them successfully to market - doesn't get a mention.

And Google, who mostly innovated the idea of not screwing over internet users with ads and pop-ups and cross-marketing crap, is an exciting innovator.

IBM is the innovator of basic technology. Google is the innovator of doing the Internet right. Apple is the PC marketplace innovator.

Microsoft? Um, well they invented something... I just don't know what that is. Truetype? SQL? The mouse? The file system? Does ANYone know?

Re:free Puff Piece for Microsoft? Here?

[Monte]

The Lotus software was particularly horrid

!!!

You should pray to develop such "horrid" software. There were two primary things that put the IBM PC on desks all over corporate America: 1) The TLA logo and 2) Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus invented the first "Killer App".

Microsoft introduced their first spreadsheet product before Lotus 1-2-3 hit the market (1982 for the former, 1983 the latter). It was such a huge scary success compared to that horrid Lotus crap that nobody can remember it's name ("Multiplan", BTW).

Excel (for Windows, it was originally introduced on some silly fruit computer of some sort) came out in 1987, leaving Lotus to pretty much own the spreadsheet market in the interim.

and swiftly abandoned by nearly everyone that wasn't glued to their memorized 1-2-3 key combos.

You mean like F1 = Help? Yeah, what a goof that was!

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