Ballmer Speaks on His Solo Act

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "In his first one-on-one interview since Bill Gates's retirement announcement, Steve Ballmer tells the Wall Street Journal he is bullish on Microsoft's investments in online services, and he dismisses as 'random malarkey' the idea that Microsoft is having trouble hiring and keeping the kind of brilliant employees that have always been the company's competitive weapon. Here's Ballmer on Gates's departure: 'As co-leaders of the business, I could allow Bill to be the full-time champion of innovation. And [now] with me really being the guy who's here every day running the place, I must be the champion of innovation.' And on competing with Google: 'We're going to compete. We're going to be in the online business. We are going to have a core around online. We're going to be excellent. That, I would tell people, to count on...'"

Comments

Outdated Icon?

[paladinwannabe2]

Now that Gates is leaving, will we be replacing the classic "We are Microsoft, you will be assimilated" logo for Microsoft stories? Would we have a Borg Ballmer? A Chair-Throwing Ballmer? Just a M$ in large font?

Re: Outdated Icon?

[Dolda2000]

Someone else suggested a panorama (read: vista) of a scrap dump. I still find that a rather good idea.

I'm no anti-microsoftie, but...

[Chabil Ha']

I would be a bit worried about Microsoft now that Bill is leaving. I would be worried that a 'geek' has left the innovation chair and is now being turned over to a businessman. That's pretty dangerous, not because he *is* a businessman, but because he is no technological visonary, ie. Steve Jobs.

Re:I'm no anti-microsoftie, but...

[mgblst]

To be fair to Bill, he was a great businessman. His innovation wasn't in the software he created, but in creating and controlling this huge market for Software - beating IBM at the same time. It will be difficult for Steve to screw up, Microsoft is in a fantastic position.

Re:Spelling error

[venir]

I liked this bit of hypocritical double speak-

And [now] with me really being the guy who's here every day running the place, I must be the champion of innovation. That doesn't mean I must be the guy who comes up with every innovation, but I really have to carry the mantle that says we're going to innovate, we're going to do new things, we're going to get into new areas, we're going to protect and nurture all kinds of innovation. That is my role.

We buy technology, and we grow organically.

Nice innovation there Steve...

Damage Control By Gates

[cbuckner]

Am I the only one that thinks Bill Gates is getting out of the business before Google embarrasses them so that He can blame the company's failure on Ballmer? Think about it. Under Bill Gates Microsoft is a multi-national; multi-billion dollar business. Under Ballmer they get pummeled by Google and Mozilla. Thus, Gates preserves his image as a brilliant mind and doesn't expose himself for being nothing more than a lucky, opportunistic, proprietor hack.

Anyone notice a pink elephant around here?

[bhmit1]

He dismisses as 'random malarkey' the idea that Microsoft is having trouble hiring and keeping the kind of brilliant employees that have always been the company's competitive weapon.

When you're that big and popular, I don't doubt that you have an easy time finding talented developers. Sure, you will lose some to the other cool companies like google, but that's not microsoft's problem. The problem is that they are popular because all the applications are written for the current version of microsoft, and the existing code is extremely complicated. They are also the majority, if not the monopoly in many parts of the industry. The result is that you can only lead the industry by abusing your monopoly powers since drastic innovative code changes cause all those applications to start breaking. And with the complex code, any improvement is likely to be drastic. The end result is that competitors pull away parts of your customer base one bit at a time and you are constantly playing catch-up to avoid losing your majority.

Re:Rather scary...

[Rob T Firefly]

For those unfamiliar with Deng Xiaoping, he's pretty much the guy who rolls tanks over student protesters. But don't try learning that from MSN in China..

Interesting

[Klaidas]

I see the storyline is very interesting...
First, Microsoft itself prefers to use Google: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/22/029 243
Then, Microsoft "warns google away": http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/16/204324 2
After that, they change their mind and are going to allow competitive search: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/19/217 218
And now, they are going to

"compete. We're going to be in the online business. We are going to have a core around online. We're going to be excellent"

What's going to be next?

pay

[stormi]

"we're one of the highest payers in our industry"

I heard before that MS employees almost never get a raise though, as compared to how often people with similar jobs do. So it's not necessarily how much they make that is an issue, but how much their pay continues to raise in relation to the economy.

Re:Bloated head

[Chabil Ha']

Steve and Linus are braggarts in their own regard, but what they *do* speaks much louder than what they *say*. Especially Linus. As a person I think he's just as egotistical as Balmer, but the revolution he has created as an engineer was created not by words, but actions.

I think more than anything this is an indicator of the state of Microsoft. If you've got to send the CEO out on PR all the time, then there's some pretty shaking ground that the company is sitting on. Products and services should be able to speak for themselves without the CEO having to go on a media tour to tell how great they are. He's got to go around evangilizing MS because if people (employees as much as customers) hear it enough, they just might start to believe it.

Innovators never talk about "innovation."

[dpbsmith]

They talk about some specific thing they personally want to do.

BIll Gates didn't say "I want to make innovative software," he said he wanted a computer on every desk and Microsoft software in that computer.

Edwin Land didn't say "I want to develop innovative imaging-related products for the consumer and technical markets," he said "Marketing is what you do when your product is no good" and "The bottom line is in heaven."

Re:Predictible Slashdot.

[Fordiman]

Meh. I don't dabble in blue sky. I use Linux on my desktop. And barely use the konsole.

Linux IS ready for the desktop, and now awaits only adoption.

Steve Ballmer is Howard Dean's long lost brother?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

"Not only are we going to kill Google, we're going to kill Adobe and IBM and Red Hat and Sybase and Oracle! We're going to kill Yahoo and SalesForce.com and eBay! And we're going to kill RealNetworks and AOL and Sony and Nintendo! And then we're going to Washington, D.C. to throw chairs in the White House! Yeeeeeaaaaaah! Developers developers developers!!!"