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Ballmer Babies Banned From iPods and Google
Valah writes "In a recent Fortune interview with Steve Ballmer, the newer kinder Microsoft CEO is not only ready to take on the videogaming, search, music download and mobile markets - but he's also laying down the law in his own house. Steve says that his kids are not allowed to use Google or have an iPod."
I'd take the other approach - if they choose rival manufacturers then study first hand why they do so.
First hand experience can tell you a lot more than market research sometimes, and might just give future MS products an edge.
From the article (emphasis mine):
Well now I get a sense of where the inability to know the market comes from. Get a clue Ballmer -- to best compete with your competition you get to know them intimately.
Your strongest plan to defeat you competition is to know them as if you were them!
The only other plausible way to unseat a king is to have so much money and power and control of other resources that you can bludgeon him, beat him mercilessly until all of his resources are gone and you can take the ... Hmmmm. Never mind.
Telling kids what they're not allowed to do/have will certainly make them stop wanting to do/have whatever it is. It'll work for sure.
On the other hand, if the alternative is being thrashed about like a rag doll by a sweaty man-ape...
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but he's also laying down the law in his own house. Steve says that his kids are not allowed to use Google or have an iPod."
Ahh when will parents EVER learn? If you forbid something, it just makes the kids want it more.
Coming soon, Ballmer's kids eventually end up working for Google, Ballmer buys an Island, sets up a wireless Windows-only network that blocks anything Google, and rules it by Windows-only voice commands from atop his throne.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I have to say that the summary given for this article isn't at all representative of the article as a whole. That being said, I have to say this. How Ballmer deals with his kids is a private matter. It should stay a private matter, and he should have known this. As CEO of a company like Microsoft, he should know that his private home practices are not justification of his proposed business models.
If he doesn't allow his kids to use Google or have iPods, that's his business. He shouldn't make it ours. That kind of preachiness can come back to bite one in the ass.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
I've been saying it for years, a company's attitude starts at the top. If he wasn't a moron, he'd be letting his kids use these things, and then he'd be observing them and quizzing them on why they like them. He has his own marketing team, right there in his house, but he's more content to control than to learn and discover. Well, -shrug-, that's why MS will be MS until he and Bill are gone. I feel sorry for the micromanaged offspring though.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
He could say "They want to be able to get individual songs on demand without a monthly fee, and P2P gives them that -- sort of -- but we can make the experience much better because look at all the frustrating hunting around and poor copies, and look at the lack of previews, and so on..." His experience with the actual user experience was obvious to anyone who saw the keynote thing.
By contrast, here we have Ballmer patting himself on the back over not letting his kids use the competition's dominant product. He's using the word "brainwashed" about his own kids. Visionary leadership, I'm sure.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
It's right there in your quote:
I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.
There is the Microsoft business strategy in a nutshell. Do not debate relative merits, just brainwash your audience. Don't let them decide - tell them what they want.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'm going to vote for #6. His kids want to use the stuff that daddy makes, and conciously choose to use Microsoft products because their father runs the company that makes them.
I highly doubt Ballmer would have choosen to say his kids were "brainwashed" into using Microsoft products unless he was joking. "Brainwashed" is a curious choice of words if he really did forbid non-Microsoft products.
If you read the interview, and not the Slashdot article, he actually says:
My reading of that isn't that he forbids them from using it, it's that his children support their father and his buisness. I have no idea how old his kids are (and neither does Wikipedia) but depending on age, it's quite believable that his kids just like emulating their father and therefore choose to use Microsoft products.
I read it as kind of a geek joke - Ballmer's kids are "brainwashed" into using Microsoft products because it's what their father uses.
Not that all kids use what their parents use - my father uses KDE and Opera, but I'm currently posting this from GNOME using Firefox. But when I was younger, and my dad bought OS/2 for our home computer, I believed him when he said it was the greatest desktop OS ever...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Seriously, I've seen this guy on various interviews and TV appearances, read about him online, and the guy seems completely mad. I'm not being facetious, the poor man is literally crazy, and looks like he's tearing himself apart in a continual battle between what's coming out of his mouth and reality.
Look at him, he's always jumpy, he has a huge vein in his head that throbs all the time, he screams really loud whenever he gets the chance to extoll the virtues of XBox 360 or Windows Vista, but has a constant grimace of a smile hoisted across his face when being asked difficult questions. He shakes his head before everything he says when he's lying (e.g. when he says how they're On Track for Vista) as if he doesn't believe it. He's so tense it makes me feel tense just watching him.
The guy needs to rest, or leave Microsoft. Banning his kids from google or ipods is just symptomatic of his increasing panic as he tries his very best to banish anything that suggests Microsoft is losing the race from his life. Any rational man would realise that Google and iPod are great products and it doesn't matter if his kids use it. It would be something to aim at. I would be saying "You think that iPod is fucking awesome, son, well just you wait for the crazy shit daddy is going to pull out of his ass," I certainly wouldn't be banning them from my household. I would use one.
I'm genuinely concerned for his health. He really shouldn't be in the position that he's in, his buddy Bill Gates put him there to act as a forcefield between Gates and the reality of Microsoft. And while BillyG sits back with a fat spliff and chills between dictating endless new features for Vista, poor old Ballmer is shipped around the country to give uncomfortable interviews and spew his insane Microsoft evangelism. I think he's the only Microsoft evangelist there is right now, and he's trying his best to be a one man army. Shame he's losing the battle.
Ballmer didn't say that iPods and Google are banned form his house. Here's what Ballmer said: "but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod."
And "brainwashed" is supposed to be a joke, although nobody here would recognize one of those when it comes to Microsoft.
If it were Linus saying "but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Windows, and you don't use MacOS," everyone here would get it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There really isn't a lot to learn from the competing products; Microsoft only needs a bigger market share to be more competative in these areas, and If MS could copy what their competitors were doing (they can't in the case of google), they would.
Marketshare doesn't just instantly materialize out of thin air. The days when MS could just leverage Windows dominance and expect that consumers would buy whatever they provided are over. I think MS has a lot to learn from competing products. The emphasis on ease of use over multitudinous features is what differentiates both Apple and Google products from Microsoft products. MS has already dramatically restructured MSN Search in an effort to mimimic the simplicity of Google. They'll have a tougher time applying what they learn from the iPod, because MS relies on third party hardware vendors to create devices. Still, it seems they could lean on their partners more heavily, telling them, "Look, if you want to run Windows Media on your devices, you need to make them easier to use."
My feeling is that Microsoft could conceivably learn from its competition, but like Apple in the early 1990s, it has drunk too much of its own Kool-Aid. Ballmer and company don't want to hear that Apple's business model with iTunes/iPod (build the hardware and the software and the music store) or Google's approach (serve users first, and advertising revenue will follow) works better than Microsoft's tried and true "own the OS and leverage it relentlessly" business model. Hence, Ballmer would rather talk about brainwashing his kids. Whether his kids are old enough to use iPods is, in my opinion, beside the point. His comment betrays his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that MS has something to learn from the competition.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Every time I hear a story about Steve Ballmer, I wonder how much longer until we see a news clip of him being led out of his house in a bathrobe and tissue boxes on his feet.
Personally, I'd let my kids use a competitor product so I can find out why they chose it, what it brings, and how we can beat it.
It is clear to me MS needs a complete managment change. There methods were fine when it was an emerging market, and they had contracts gaurenting OS sales with every computer sold.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on