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."

Comments

Would a different approach be better?

[Mattygfunk1]

I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use 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.

Re:Would a different approach be better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting this anonymously because even though I no longer work at Microsoft, I don't want them to know who I am or where I work now.

Funny you should mention dog food. I'm a former Microsoft employee and "dogfooding" is what Microsoft calls internal betas, and "we eat our own dog food" is a pretty common expression at MSFT.

Last night, as I was navigating around my new cell phone, I was thinking "This isn't a bad phone, but I liked the interface better on my old one (I didn't get another from that vendor because my old one broke too many times), but you know what? I wish Apple would start making cell phones. The UI would be the best; if they sold them, I'd buy one right now." That must be MSFT's worst nightmare. Or one of them, at least.

Steve Ballmer makes reference in TFA to convergence devices, and to expect to see announcements from MSFT on that in the next twelve months. OK, maybe. Maybe they'll even succeed. But I think a more likely scenario for success would be Apple selling cell phone-iPod hybrids and eating Windows Mobile's lunch. Microsoft has some good products (sadly, those are usually the ones that get the least attention), but they don't have anything that competes with an Apple product that is as good as the Apple product. I'm sure an Apple cell phone would be that way, too.

About Ballmer's kids, he only *thinks* they don't use Google. Would you want to be laughed at for being the only kid at school who didn't use Google and said "I'll MSN Search it and get back to you" (I'm not kidding, that's what people say at MSFT; you're not allowed to use Google as a verb. I was actually *ordered* not to say "google it" when I was a n00b there). I think what he should have said is "They don't use Google or iPods at home where I can keep tabs on them."

His reference to having them brainwashed, though, was serious, I'm sure. That's the reason I left Microsoft: the culture is very brainwashed. The propaganda stream is unending. Most people at MSFT seem to truly believe that they are the most creative and innovative company in the world. IMO very few, even at the highest levels, realize they aren't. Well, the propaganda and brainwashing was a major aspect. The other is that I realized something that very few at MSFT do, or at least will talk about: as an innovator and leader, MSFT's day is done. IMO Microsoft reached it's zenith when Windows 95 and Office 97 were still on the market. Microsoft is still hungry, but has become to massive to be agile. The recent management shuffle involving Vista is a nice example of re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The people replaced were competent enough, and I'm sure the new ones are too, but they are no more likely to succeed. The organization, the group-think, the brainwashing, and the horrendous legacy code base and commitment to backwards compatibility, will sabotage their best efforts.

so, he has his kids brainwashed

[yagu]

From the article (emphasis mine):

Do you have an iPod?

No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

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.

Re:so, he has his kids brainwashed

[_xeno_]

I'm gonna take a wild guess that Steve Ballmer is, in fact, capable of joking, and that his kids aren't really forbidden from using Google or iPods, but instead really are Microsoft supporters. It's not really unheard of for kids to be fanatical about things their parents are involved in.

I expect that Ballmer's kids really are "brainwashed" in the sense that they believe in their dad and the company they work for. I doubt they've been actually forbidden from using it, they'd just rather use the tools their dad makes.

I know I've heard plenty from my father about how the projects he works on are the world's greatest... I'm tempted to name names, but I think I'll pass for now.

Simple Example: Jobs and the iTunes intro

[ianscot]

When Steve Jobs introduced the iTunes store, and earlier when he was selling recording execs on it, he was able to describe to them exactly what consumers did and didn't like about peer-to-peer networks and monthly subscription models.

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.

Re:Brilliant

[_xeno_]

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:

[Fortune:] Do you have an iPod?

[Ballmer:] No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

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...

Ballmer is a nutter

[TwistedSpring]

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.