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Balmer Vows to Kill Google
An anonymous reader writes "Probably due to the Microsoft suit against Google over human resources, some very heated exchanges have turned up in some court documents. Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer has apparently
vowed to kill Internet search leader Google, according to documents filed in the increasingly bitter battle between the rivals." From the article: "At some point in the conversation, Mr. Ballmer said: 'Just tell me it's not Google,'' Lucovosky said in his statement. Lucovosky replied that he was joining Google. 'At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office,' Lucovosky recounted, adding that Ballmer then launched into a tirade about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. 'I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google.' Schmidt previously worked for Sun Microsystems and was the CEO of Novell."
isn't it slander and defamation to post quotes like that without the evidence to back it up?
Microsoft lacks class. It's visible in their products and apparently shows also in personal behavior of their leaders. It's interesting to watch Microsoft's Channel 9 to see this in their corporate culture. No wonder they get mad at Google.
He looks a bit like Tony Soprano on that article's picture, this is truly scary.
I kind of half imagine him like Scarface at the end of the Pacino movie.
- sigs are for wimps.
Give the guy a break. He's got a high pressure job. He works for the most demonized tech company in America, if not the world, and MS's products and services are constantly being hacked by hundreds of thousands of virus/worm writers with apparently nothing better to do than try to destroy his company.
On top of all that, his city, state, and federal governments are all hoping to find a way to grab his $46 billion either through lawsuits, taxes, or confiscation. That's the way of things. When you're successful, everyone else tries to tear you down.
I heard plenty of stories of such behavior when I was at Fidelity Investments. These upper level analysts who were getting high six figure salaries would scream and throw their phones against the wall when things didn't go their way. The pressure was really getting to them.
I'm not defending all of Microsoft's actions but you've got to feel for the guy when he's caught on tape/web/whatever acting like an ordinary, flawed human being with emotions. Frankly I'm rather relieved to hear that Ballmer is not some kind of icy monster. Heh. I wonder how many Aeron chairs he goes through in a month!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
You can't be sued over what you only say in court. If you repeate the same slander or libel outside of court, you can be sued for that after the case has ended (regardless of whether you're found guilty of perjury), as SCO's executives might find out soon.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What kind of chilling effect is this having?
Go ask Google, Skype, Symantec, Apple, the local Linux guy, all of which benefit immensely from Microsoft not getting it until it's too late.
I used to work for a company that had a mini MS complex: we thought everyone in IT industry services sector or reseller channel was a competition. The result: we fought a war on 900 fronts and could not bring critical resources to bear on our real competitors (other national mega resellers). Eventually, we were spending more money on trying to out-market and out business develop inconsequential competitors and our sales guys were losing sales because we were not able to deliver hardware on time to customers.
Right now, MS is showing signs of what I saw at Inacom:
* Changes and delays with their OS product.
* Development of huge initiatives that business partners want and customers don't want like DRM and trusted computing
* Not adapting to changing business models - open source for example.
* Ability to market, but not deliver - like the MSN search that was going to be more accurate, etc...
* Competing against yourself - AXAPTA, NAVISION, GreatPlains... how many competing and overlapping ERP/CRM packages do you need?
* When was the last time there was a major real change in office, anyway?
* Oh, and ceeding the entire low end of the computer industry to Linspire and linux (when was the last time you saw a new windowsXP computer for $250)?
-- $G
At least he's passionate about his job. That's more than you can say about a lot of executives. What's wrong with wanting to crush the competition? That's what capitalism's all about. Anti-trust that's why. That same arguement could (and was) used to justify Rockefeller, Standard oil and a host of others. M$ should have been busted up when it was found guilty of anti-trust. But the DOJ and Congress were too damn scared to rock the boat and owned too much stock in it themselves. Now shoo away fan boy you're worse than a fundy apologist surrounded by contradictions and religious dilemnas yet stands there with hands over their ears shouting "la la la I can't hear you la la la la la"
I find this story very interesting, because back when I was in college I interned at Intel. Very first day we went through antitrust training because Intel had been burned a couple of times on antitrust issues. One of the big points they made was don't ever claim that some technology is an "AMD-killer" or that we're going to "kill" a certain company. Statements like that can be used in antitrust proceedings as proof that you were actively trying to force a competitor out of the marketplace. Not sure if it applies here, but there are definitely some similarities.
I do not see that line anywhere in the article.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
I never understood why Bill Gates didn't retire once he was worth an astronomical amount of money.
You hear about Ballmer flippin out, throwing chairs because he lost someone to Google, but what does he care? How OLD is he?
I'll guess... early 50's, and looking at him, he's not exactly in great shape and probably has a shitload of stress to deal with, which means he'll be dead in 20 years.
Why not just fucking retire? You're worth billions... so what personal feeling of satisfaction is to be had by conquering google? Even if you don't conquer google, you'll still be filthy fucking rich.
What's the point? It's not like they offer quality products..
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Actually, what Ballmer is doing is true capitalism; it's just the extreme of it. Capitalism is great, but this is exactly what it turns into when allowed to go unchecked. That is why we have governmental controls. Too much government = communism; too little = ruthless Capitalism (e.g. Ballmer).
While I agree that Ballmer's strategy is maniacal and disgusting, you can't reproach him by saying that he isn't true to Capitalism, as though Capitalism is this machine turning out benevolence and fairness.
This is akin to saying that all we need is true Democracy. Democracy is great too, but pure Democracy is pure majority-rule and no protection of minorities. If 51% wanted to ostracize blacks, then, hey, that's democracy. Fortunately, we don't live in a pure democracy. We have very undemocratic institutions such as the Constitution and the Courts.
Thus, you can't condemn Ballmer as though he's not following "true" Capitalism. He is; that's the problem.
But this is hurting the market, in the most direct way possible: Microsoft's expansion strategy is based not on finding the next big thing, but on stopping it before it starts.
;-) If you want to continue developing new ideas, there might be safer places to do so.
Well, maybe, maybe not. Perhaps it's only hurting the American portion of the industry.
Consider the origins of the things that Microsoft is trying to kill. Google is a bit unusual, in that it started in the US. How many other real innovations lately have come from the US?
The "browser war"? Netscape was a commercialization of Mosaic, which was developed in Switzerland. Its descendants, mozilla and firefox, are completely international developments (and are finally starting to solve the "internationalization" problem.) The most notable independently-developed browser is opera, from Norway.
Startup OSs? Linux was started in Finland, and was in part a spinoff of minix, which came from the Netherlands. Linus himself now lives in the US, but linux development is rather evenly distributed around the world. We've recently read here of iTron, developed in Japan, in use as an embedded kernel in billions of devices built around the world, but still nearly unknown in the US. (Why is this?)
Much of Microsoft's clout is restricted to the US. There are serious signals that governments all over are getting very nervous about them, and are starting to take steps to limit their power. In the US, Microsoft was one of the biggest contributors to George Bush's two campaigns, which bought them the effective dismissal of the Justice Dept's attempt to reign them in, and an "agreement" that effectively indemnifies them against further charges in US courts.
As a result, they are effectively free to take any actions, legal or not, against US competitors. But they are having little success at reigning in new developments outside the US.
Google should just slowly shift their operation to a non-US base, preferably a widely-distributed one not under the control of any one government, as many big corporations are doing. And the rest of the US computer industry should continue moving its R&D to other countries, beyond the reach of Microsoft.
American computer geeks might seriously consider learning a couple of languages other than English. (No, I don't mean Java or Ruby.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
What we have are two very different forms of capitalism: Big Business Capitalism and Free Market Capitalism. They are different and generally mutually incompatible. Yet they can both claim to be the "real" form of Capitalism.
Big Buisness Capitalism has historically been the foundation of Social Darwinism.
We as a country made a very conscious decision in the middle part of the 19th century to move away from Big Buisness Capitalism and use the government to protect the marketplace. This eventually led to very large social and economic changes occuring in the early part of the 20th century. The idea that the Free Market is something to be protected is something that has been further advanced by fears that we could see a sort of fascism by Big Business.
Now, to tie this in with the writings of Karl Marx. Marx was writing at the time of the Industrial Revolution and Das Kapital largely discusses the nature of Bug Business Capitalism. Marx rightly pointed out that this form of Capitalism was unsustainable in any real way and resulted in a large number of social ills (he saw it as better than the Feudal economic systems it replaced however). Marx therefore concluded that as this form of capitalism collapsed under its own weight, that it would be replaced by a system where the workers ran and owned the means of production. In general, this has not happened. However, Marx was right in that this form of capitalism did fall in the developed world. What has increasingly replaced it, however, is not Marxian socialism but *free market* capitalism. I am actually genuinely surprised that Marx did not see the rise of antitrust laws, for example, as the foundation of what would replace or modify the forms of Capitalism he was writing about.
While Free Market Capitalism does "socialize" one of the important aspects of the "means of production" it does not do so by declaring factories, energy infrastructure, etc. as common goods but rather by focusing on a more abstract concept of the "marketplace" as a common good and something to be protected by the government. This is why we have antitrust laws.
What Microsoft is doing is fundamentally at odds with capitalism as it is established here in the US. They have on their record a court finding that they violated antitrust law. I.e. they are a convicted monopolist (yes, they were conviceted in a civil case, but there are plenty of court documents which uphold the concept of a conviction in a civil case).
Another interesting angle of this case might be if counterclaims are filed as a result alleging that Microsoft is abusing its monopoly to hurt Google (MSN search is the default search engine in IE). IANAL, but I believe that the principle of collateral estoppel might put Microsoft in a bad position here. Maybe even bad enough to cause them to drop the suit in exchange for the counterclaims to be dropped.
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