Slashdot Mirror
Does Ballmer Need To Go?
Pickens notes a TechCrunch analysis wondering — after Windows Vista and the failed Yahoo bid — whether Steve Ballmer's days at Microsoft are numbered. "Ballmer has been the big driver behind [the Yahoo] deal at Microsoft — some would say to the point of obsession. After the disaster that has been Windows Vista, Ballmer may have realized he needed to redeem himself in the eyes of Microsoft's board. And the 'transformative' deal with Yahoo was the way he was going to do it... If Microsoft's board loses patience with him, it might have to ask Bill Gates to temporarily come back as CEO until it finds a replacement. After all, Ballmer has already made a strong and convincing case for why Microsoft needs Yahoo to make its online and advertising strategy work. It's not clear whether Microsoft can achieve its objectives on its own or through other acquisitions. Maybe Ballmer thinks he can still do the deal by making Yahoo's stock price collapse and come back with a hostile offer."
And, the slowest moving company award goes to.......
How we know is more important than what we know.
The fastest moving chair in a company award goes to...
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
As the summary said, he still has a chance to get Yahoo. We, who see him as a sweaty gorilla, are not necessarily see his qualities as the M$ board sees them.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
YES...YES...YES...!!!!
For one, the biggest FUD machine would be gone then. Though we'd probably lose the Developers and Monkey Dances too :(
Microsoft dropped the Ballmer.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Will that be enough to make the M$ share price recover ?
TFA seems to assume that Balmer wanted to aquire Yahoo, and then did it entirely on his own initiative. That is certainly not the case. Even in a company as big as MS, the CEO does not go about spending that kind of money without the approval of major stockholders. He must have had the blessing of at least Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and probably others.
All of them knew going in that Yahoo had to voluntarily cooperate. So they know that Balmer is not to blame. So they are not going to dismiss him. They are going to go to plan B: the hostile takeover.
And what kind of person do you want leading a hostile takeover? You want the most vicious, gut-ripping, back-stabbing, ball-cutting executive you can find. They'll give him a raise.
YES!
:-)
Save the chairs! Remove Ballmer!
all the conspiracy theories are too over the top. the business world is no where near this dramatic.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
A: No. Microsoft needs to go. Hopefully the new low-spec laptops (EEPC, OLPC, etc.) will help the process along.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
The yahoo board are more likely to be fired by the shareholders than Balmer.
For that matter Vista isn't really all that much of a failure in the long run, it gets a lot of bad press, but it's not a horrible OS, and even if financially it does turn into the next ME, the lessons they've learned will still be useful in the next OS.
Balmer has been with Microsoft for a long time, and given that everyone will think that the Microsoft CEO is a vicious, greedy, vindictive SOB even if they put a saint in the position, they may as well get the benefits of an actual vicious, greedy, vindictive SOB.
They are going to go to plan B: the hostile takeover.
That was about a week ago.
Then they moved to Plan C, "Negotiation With Looming Threat".
Now they're onto Denial, and then finally Forgiveness? Hmm, wrong metaphor.
But basically they are past the hostile takeover and other the other side with no more contact to be had with Yahoo. Sure the board approved it but with projects of this magnitude there is usually one neck consequences are attached to, and that is certainly Balmer. Now it's a question of, does the board feel like the dodged a bullet or are they unhappy for even trying or what? Perhaps this was all just a teaching lesson to show Balmer why they don't actually implement more of his ideas.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That Microsoft did not get Yahoo is not something that Ballmer or Microsoft will not be blamed for. He set a price and when it was not accepted tried various negoiations and when that failed he walked away. Smart business.
He now just has to show how Microsoft will build software to fit the roll Yahoo would, but he has this year or longer to do that.
Now if you are the CEO of Yahoo you better be about to deliever the golden goose.
Most of M$ success comes from how they managed to screw everyone (partners and competitors alike) by abusing they monopoly position. Now that Europe is strong enough to not turn a blind eye (with non negligible punishment), even the US justice department is watching (without any real action though) it's much more difficult for them.
Everything that Ballmer is doing is pretty much what Bill Gates was doing. The only way his comeback will change anything is if he's able to lobby (corrupt) the world governments to go back to his old habits. Finding a way of making OpenSource illegal would also be part of the agenda (SCO anyone?).
The yahoo board are more likely to be fired by the shareholders than Balmer.
I don't think anyone is saying people at Yahoo are not going to face some heat either. They're just saying that the whole deal was really pushed by Balmer and since he couldn't make it happen, he may well pay.
For that matter Vista isn't really all that much of a failure in the long run, it gets a lot of bad press, but it's not a horrible OS,
Doesn't matter how good it is if it continues to get horrible press.
Balmer has been with Microsoft for a long time, and given that everyone will think that the Microsoft CEO is a vicious, greedy, vindictive SOB even if they put a saint in the position, they may as well get the benefits of an actual vicious, greedy, vindictive SOB.
But there's the problem. He doesn't come off looking very vicious or greedy when he backs off at the first counteroffer. "Lame Duck" springs to mind.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ballmer took over in 2000. Here is Microsoft's stock performance since 2000:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
Ballmer is responsible for:
* The 7+ billion dollar Xbox fiasco
* The Zune marketplace flop
* The PR disaster that Vista has become
* Mass exodus of Microsoft employees to Google and other exciting and growing companies
* A total failure to get anywhere with Search and Advertising
Ballmer has been a complete failure in every single effort by Microsoft to create viable products outside of their core OS/office software/server software products.
I just hope he is not the scape goat... Tho if he is not then axe him like the major networks axe their best shows...
No matter how much people hate MS, the fact of life is that MS leads the market in a lot of segments. The failure of Microhoo is not that bad as has been made to sound. It takes balls to walk out of a deal which the whole world is watching. It was good that nothing hostile was done (MS is capable of doing that - has the moolah). In the end, it is Yahoo's loss. A lot of enterprising employees have quit, and many will, soon. What will Y! be without its best people? M$ will survive and do something else. What? That is a million, rather, billion dollar question. http://techwatch.reviewk.com/
I've always seen Ballmer as the idiot patsy. The one to blow a lot of hot air and take the fall when everything goes wrong. He rarely seems to know what he's talking about, and is always talking before he thinks (either that, or he has an extremely defective thought process...). I don't know if he knows anything about programming, but I at least want to see a decent software engineer in charge of Microsoft. They did just fine at their usual "crush the opposition" game when Bill was in charge. There are a hell of a lot of mistakes in Ballmer's era. Whether or not he's responsible for them, he will be held responsible.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
He and Gates surely control enough stock to do as they please. After all, if the board hasn't come after them after six billion down the hole for Vista, they aren't going to come after them for anything.
;-)
Both those guys are convinced they're geniuses, too, which is not conducive to stepping aside for someone else. And to be fair, given the corporate culture they've carefully nurtured, I seriously doubt any of those waiting in the wings could do a better job, anyway, so fuck it you know?
I bet they still both wish they were Steve Jobs tho.
expandfairuse.org
Balmer knows Yang wants more, and Balmer has just made a villian out of Yang. If Yang wanted less distraction, he actually got more now that shareholders will revolt due to sagging stock price. It's really a win-win situation for Balmer & Microsoft. On the surface, Balmer & Microsoft lost, but in fact, they just won in Wall Street. Yahoo will be part of Microsoft, and far cheaper than $31 a share.
I quite like to see MS going down the tubes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Old Steve still holds a boatload of shares. It will be hard to dislodge him with the connections he has. If Gates won't turn on him, he is essentially safe.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The SlashDot Borg Icon for Microsoft needs to be Ballmer not Gates.
In Microsoft there are two sets of crowds, the Gates set and the Ballmer set.
The Gates set is more apt to give stuff to users, do things the right way, and has been the underpinnings of things MS has gotten right or had done right by the IT world as a whole. They tend to take what they do seriously, have pride in Microsoft and want it to continue to succeed for the right reasons, etc.
The Ballmer group are the business minded, make a buck, and screw you type of people. They step on each other, screw over other projects if it gains them something, and could give a crap about the IT world or even Microsoft itself in the long run.
When you see the 4 versions of Vista, this was the result of the Ballmer crowd and OEMs wanting a dirt cheap version. The Gates crowd kept NT as two roles, Desktop and Server, but sadly the Ballmer nuts won that war cause they thought it would make MS an extra buck.
Gates = technology and empowering.
Ballmer = dominance and money.
Sadly Gates assumes that because most businesses think like Ballmer that Ballmer is doing the right thing, when Microsoft could be structured more like Gate's foundation and not only help the IT world more, but be just as profitable.
I would love to see Ballmer retire and the idiots that think like him go as well.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Developers developers developers developers.
There, I said it.
God that's such a stupid catchy song.
Buying Danger Inc http://www.danger.com/ was to make fight with Google Android (Danger was founded by the Google Android guys). Again, no synergy with MS's current mobile offerings.
Most folk working at Yahoo and Danger would probably rather quit than get Borged, so trying to acquire skills is pointless (and neither Danger nor Yahoo use Windows so would really not help anyway).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
How about Sandeep Gupta then?
Now that I think about it, Yep I do. Then he can do the same to Microsoft as he did to SCO.
I hope I got that wrong, but that's the first impression I got from reading your post. Although I would agree with you that Gates is less of a bull in a chine shop than Gates is, I don't think I'd trust Gates as far as I could throw him either. We have seen enough charades over the past (and these days with the Foundation) to be pretty sure Gates isn't a fair player either.
:-).
However, Yahoo as well as buying their way through the ISO process are indeed very much Ballmer. Gates would have been a lot more subtle. He'd have worked the buy-in of many shareholders well before he'd approach Yahoo - Yahoo would have been taken over from the inside before the offer would have ever been made. The way it's now done is 100% Ballmer: "do what I say or I'll destroy you", which is soo 90s
Insert
is to try hard to put old baldy into Google.
Vista is indeed a disaster. It failed to stop Apple from continuing its growth. Macs are less value performance-wise than PCs, and regular people still buy ever more Macs. I think it is because OS X is easier to use and more secure than Vista. Microsoft is losing its grip on the consumer market, and will most likely end up competing on the corporate market. Oh, and XBox360. I'll give them that - the XBox360 is not so bad.
Stop the brainwash
Typically in business if a plan goes Pete Tong all those who were involved in the approval process play a game of musical chairs of "well I always said there were risks". There may be only two things that can save Ballmer now; if the Yahoo deal is not yet dead, or if Gates & Allen fear there are worse problems to come for MS, and they may need him to take the blame for them.
Bill Gates is still the Chairman, the largest shareholder and founder.
Stevie B is the second largest shareholder.
Between Billy G and Stevie B they hold over 10% of the company (a lot for a large cap company).
Surely the only way Steve gets rolled as CEO is if Bill loses all faith in him, and given their long relationship this seems unlikely.
I doubt very much that in the face of a hostile Bill the board has any hope of removing him even if they, and their institutional shareholders are unhappy with his performance.
It seems exceedingly unlikely that on the back of these problems they'd get rid of him. If it ever got remotely near that, he and Bill would have a word and he'd "retire to spend more time with his family".
--Q
Problem is cultural. Also, at this point, what does it have lasting past the desktop? The 360 is really a fad, and only as good as the next piece of hardware -- till console games are no longer desired. Or a desktop-reliant MP3 player? And the company suffers from the mentality of a monopolist. Take away the desktop and the company, given its size and wealth, has little of any importance or value.
but i have to give it to him (or microsoft) this was a great move, now yahoos own disgruntled shareholders will do the dirty work for Microsoft
i mean the whole takeover thing was a win win for microsoft
they managed to seriously knock their competitor of-track withoutt spending a penny
You idiot slashtards are so blinded by your ideology that you can't understand the way the business world works.
Ballmer's bid for Yahoo was little more than a tactic to throw the organization into chaos and make the CEO have to battle shareholders and face a lawsuit from them.
This strategy by Ballmer was quite effective, so why should anyone other than the angry slashtard fringe even care?
Your deluding yourselves if you think the board of directors doesn't fully support ballmer. Who do you think the biggest shareholders of microsoft are? This site is so infantile in its understanding of the world... its pathetic that anyone even reads the drivel that is slashdot.
"Ballmer has been the big driver behind [the Yahoo] deal at Microsoft -- some would say to the point of obsession."
Yet when the bid failed he seemed quite able to drop it. I wouldn't call that obsession, obsession would've been continuing the bid until they got Yahoo no matter how costly and damaging to Microsoft. He knew when to quit and he did.
Of course then the summary goes on to bitch at him FOR dropping it. Make up your mind, was it bad that he continued as far as he did to the point the summary feels he deserves to be called obsessive over it or not?
whether some of these fiascos are Balmer's fault. Particularly, what happened with vista. It's very plausible that Vista died of feature bloat because Balmer didn't pay enough attention to it in the beginning; however, it's hard to tell from the outside who was really responsible.
Either way though, It's clear that some kind of shakeup needs to occur for Microsoft to continue to compete. I just don't see Microsoft being able to expand into new markets using the clumsy "throw money at the problem" approach that post-gates Microsoft has used. Money's an important tool for a company the size of Microsoft, but it can't cover up underlying problems, like a project that suffering feature creep, or a corporate culture that suppresses bottom up innovation.
Bill Gates seemed to run a much tighter ship overall, with a supposedly fairly "hands on" management style. However, it is true that Microsoft was a much smaller company under Gate's tenure, and I'm not sure he would be the man to put back in charge of the new Microsoft.
Big Splash och small trickle? ;-)
That is a given.
If you think Bill Gates is the "chair"man, you must be new here...
MSFT has been underperforming the exchange indices for as long as Ballmer's been in charge. Now that MSFT is not, and will never again be a growth stock, it should be a dividend stock. Every billion dollars that MSFT pisses away on failures like the zune or the Xbox, is shareholders' money being wasted on Ballmer's ego trips.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If I crapped a turd out of my ass and it spoke, I would take what it had to say over Michael Arrington's word. The guy's rapidly becoming the John Dvorak of the 2000's. He just sits there and speculates wildly and makes stuff up with no sources, and everybody repeats his gibberish as if he had ever actually been right about anything.
How long has he been in the car?
I'm not pulling over ten minutes after we leave the Denny's and if he touches his sister one more time I'm going to turn this car around and we won't go back to Disneyland until next year.
Windows revenues dropped 24% last quarter. This means Microsoft has realised that Vista is a disaster, and non-OS and non-Office markets are the only ways to keep the share-holders happy. Hence the (attempted) Yahoo takeover. Now even that has failed spectacularly.
Asus (EEE PC), Ubuntu and Apple have taken significant desktop market shares away from Microsoft. Extending XP for the UMPC was Microsoft's response for the EEE success. The only way Microsoft can win back the desktop race from Apple and Ubuntu would be to declare Vista a disaster, and bring back XP at a lower price.
Until a newer version of Windows - a sleek, slim edition - comes in, Microsoft will have to pray the desktop marketshare will not erode further. Dropping Ballmer and Vista would be a good first step, though.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
We all know it was developers, developers, developers, developers .
Get him out, and get some real ideas in! Save Microsoft, kick out Ballmer!
These days it's a bit better but NOT seeing Gates was harder work ..
Insert
I left at the peak. Not just luck of course. Also not just smelling the coffee. It was a feedback effect. By leaving, someone not quite as talented took my place. And soon more people decided it was time to leave. Of course, it didnt just happen to me, but I really do feel if I had stayed things could have been different. Its just that, well, too many parasites and glommed on and it just wasn't worth fighting them anymore.
While I think Ballmer is certainly responsible, the problems really started much earlier. I blame Melinda for taking the edge off Bill, seriouly, he was a changed man after he got married. Balmer picked up the slack and quite frankly, hes an overbearing personality with no technical knowledge.
One of my heroes, Chris Peters had said that in order to have a successful product, you must reduce all dependencies. After he left, Ballmer changed the strategy: he actually told everyone to increase their dependencies on other teams. I think he must have been influenced by some of those self-help gurus who talk about the stages of maturity (dependence,independence, inter-dependence) and misapplied the lessons. Whatever it was, working at MS became a real chore and jerks, megalomaniacs and scammers began get power and the BS built up.
I doubt MS can ever recover from this period, its stock will never rise significantly again.
1: Design a new search engine
2: Hire Google to run it for you
3:.....
4: DESTROY THEM!!!1111one
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
If Ubuntu would have been pushed this aggressively down the throat of customers, Ubuntu would be the most 'used' OS :)
Being unable to buy anything else than Vista helps boosting its sales records.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I'm a developer so Balmer is my God:P
As much as I dislike him, but it's not Balmer who needs to go, it's Microsoft. The problem isn't that Balmer drove the company into a corner, but that it's been driving towards that corner for at least ten, if not twenty, years. Nothing that has happened surprised anyone who's been watching MS for some time, it's all just standard operating procedure. Their problem is that the world has changed, and what worked in 1998 simply doesn't work anymore in 2008.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Anyone who didn't see right through what MS was doing this week is really dense. I'll break it down:
1. Make a big splash in the news that they are finally sitting down to talk
2. 'Walk away' very publically saying there will not even be a hostile takeover.
3. Watch Yahoo stock tank and wait for the inevitable shareholder lawsuits against Yahoo
4. Wait for Yahoo to come crawling back
5. ?
6. Profit?
I LOVE THIS COMPANY!!!
Ok, I've said this a long time. The way Microsoft is acting due to Ballmer is irresponsible. We are soon releasing a new business ourselves (I'm CEO), but I am worried for a buy-out because I see how irresponsible companies are run. Microsoft is not the only example, but one of the worst. Microsoft way or running their business causes contradictions which results in their business being just a slow painful suicide. Painful for themselves, their customers and their competitors.
The way he dances around on stage, he always looks like he 'needs to go.'
This just in... Steve Balmer has just announced his imminent retirement as CEO of Microsoft. Balmer stated that he wanted to spend more time with his family and to pursue personal interests. In related news, Microsoft announced that it will immediately make all its products Open Source... And now, back to reality.
Their problem is that the world has changed, and what worked in 1998 simply doesn't work anymore in 2008.
Actually, Microsoft's changed a lot since 1998, though they were already setting down the road to where they are now... they introduced ActiveX in 1997, for example... they still had NT running on at least four platforms, they were still supporting more than the Win32 subsystem in NT, and while they'd moved GDI into the kernel both NT4 and the initial release of NT5 (Windows 2000) were still decent desktop operating systems. They didn't really start going round the twist until Windows XP came out.
If Microsoft in 1998 had been like Microsoft in 2008 there's no way I'd have picked the Citrix-based solution over one of the emulation schemes that were starting to show up back then.
And all that really crazy stuff came about after Ballmer became CEO in 2000.
That includes operating system kernels, compilers and programming languages, and office applications. Why do they want to be Google? BillG and SteveB got enough money to buy the whole planet over several times. They should say 'enough' and simply improve on what they have.
Anyone familiar with Yahoo must know that they (1) have a viable internet business model, a rarity to be sure. (2) have a lot of very competent staff, some are just brilliant. (I know some of them personally and have worked with a few in other companies.)
Microsoft, on the other hand, is a failure. Long gone are the 80s where they had interesting ideas and the ability to deliver. The irony is that the only reason Microsoft is so profitable is because of their monopoly that they has fighting so hard to maintain. If it weren't that they pre-installed on almost all consumer/commodity P.C. type computers, they would be nothing more than wordperfect, wordstar, or DRI are today.
First, chair jokes have become an important part of Slashdot culture and it would be a shame to lose that. Let's face it: Steve is funny in a way that I doubt any successor of his will ever be. They just won't be able to compete. I mean, Steve looks and acts like the 800-pound gorilla that is M$. Developers, developers, developers... He was born for this job!
Second, and more seriously, what's bad for M$ is good for us. Besides, you don't really think that anyone taking over from Steve will turn M$ into a kinder, gentler company, do you? No way! Anyone who does will know that if M$ is to keep raking in its billions, the company will have no choice but to defend its current monopoly.
Just because the guy who posted the article isn't sure whether Microsoft should have acquired Yahoo or not (complains that they didn't, complains that they tried), doesn't mean Steve should go anywhere. Heck it doesn't even provide any good indicator whether Steve should eat Raisin Bran or Captain Crunch at breakfast. I really don't know how to speculate on Steve Balmer in context of Microsoft's actions.
If he stays there will be trou-ble
If he goes the stock will double.
Anyone who's seen that windows 1.0 sales video will probably get the same vibe. He just feels sleazy.
That's probably why he went so far.
He's like the Dick Cheney of Microsoft.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Right. And by that kind of logic, Windows ME wasn't a disaster either. Of course Vista has big numbers, it's being pushed by the world's biggest software monopoly. Business genius that you are, you should know that when your numbers are going down, not up, despite everything else being in your favor, that you are failing. Sorry Charlie, go fish.
- Headcount has increased from 35,000 to 80,000 Chair count has fluctuated wildly and now stands at 52,000.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I could care less if he goes, I hope he wipes if he does... /Yeah, I went there...
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Ballmer has no vision other than a Microsoft world. Competitors products are seen by him as evil and he won't let his kids even use them (iPod for example).
Not buying Microsoft isn't a crime, it's called choice. I know Microsoft would rather there wasn't choice but we're not living in the early 1990s anymore.
Time to go Steve, you're too emotional and too blinkered.
He needs to die.
Seriously tho, let him remain and continue to drag Microsoft down, and perhaps he will kill them in the end and get them out of our hair..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
but please don't send him over here!
Had to stop at "been treated like an ATM machine by the EU". Ever consider there might be some merit to the EU's side of the argument?
you had me at #!
Bahaha! Good luck getting him fired. He is the second largest stockholder. He owns almost 5% of the stock.
"sell IP at rates below what their competitors would charge"
Huh? They're not selling "IP".
They're selling some vague kind of "thing" in shrinkwrap, but since the license is inside the shrinkwrap, and it may not even be a license, who knows what the hell you're getting? All you know is that your neighbours need you to have it, your boss needs you to have it, your kids need you to have it, because it doesn't interoperate properly with anyone else.
The competition is FREE, with a real license, and uses open standards. Unfortunately, MS' business model is to snuff out competition dishonestly rather than compete. Hence the lawsuits; adverse judgments; intransigent behaviour; and fines.
you had me at #!
Hate to break it to you, but beer is a human creation.
you had me at #!
I have to use the restroom. Somebody please watch my chair?
-Steve
Microsoft are suffering the consequences of their own breath-taking success. The company's traditional market are saturated, and in order to keep their shareholders happy, and therefore their stock price up (which dramatically impacts their ability to raise money from institutional lenders), MS have to boldly venture into new markets. It's not enough that their revenue is still astronomical; it's beginning to plateau, and unless they can identify new streams of income they'll become irrelevant to the people who really drive a company's stock price: the day traders and speculators. Despite what many Slashdotters may believe or wish, Microsoft won't vanish overnight; they're too damned big and rich to just evaporate. Right now they're experiencing the "thousand cuts"; beset on all sides with legal challenges; having emboldened competitors eroding their markets; and worst of all for them, losing the mindshare of the average consumer, to whom heretofore "Windows" meant "computer". Given their cash reserves, this situation could conceivably continue for the foreseeable future. That cash pile is the buffer against market shocks, and until it dwindles to nothing, they'll continue to aggressively pursue new opportunities. They have to; like a shark, they have to keep moving forward in order to survive.
n/t
you had me at #!
This industry is in FAR worse shape than I thought. [Shivers]
you had me at #!
It's widely considered a technical failure as well as a marketing failure. References everywhere (not just on /.) - for example, you could look at the reactions of OEMs.
you had me at #!
Ballmer took over in 2000. Here is Microsoft's stock performance since 2000:
I'd like to see that chart adjusted for inflation. Bet it tells an even more interesting tale.
Microsoft's corporate execution wasn't great before Ballmer got there, but since he took the reigns it's been positively dismal. There aren't many people who can run a multi-billion dollar software company into the ground, but he's managed it. Everything he touches turns to absolute crap.
Ballmer has been a complete failure in every single effort by Microsoft to create viable products outside of their core OS/office software/server software products.
I'd argue that he's turned Office into an expensive piece of bloatware. And Windows should have been replaced after XP with a more flexible and slimmer OS product.
Microsoft execution has been horrible and that includes their core profit centers. Instead of putting their efforts into producing the best software products available in the market (not the same as the most ubiquitous), Ballmer put his efforts into flying around trying to strong arm big cities and companies not to jump ship for Linux and OpenOffice.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If you think MS bashing is unfashionable, how do you feel about fighting organised crime?
you had me at #!
Which department were you in, if you don't mind saying? I mean, were you working with Windows or one of the 'core' technologies, or the games studio? I think that some segments of MS have been maturing while the 'core' components (OS and Office) have been falling behind. This is, of course, from an outsiders perspective... but you can see how Visual Studio has been getting better and better while Vista turned out to be... well, Vista. The Open Source labs over there seem to be picking up a bit, too.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
So your defense of Ballmer is that he's par with the market? "Mediocre" is a firing offense in the high places.
Besides, it's not a sane comparison. MSFT is such a big chunk of the NASDAQ computer index that of course the two will correleate highly. That's like saying my ass tends to follow my body around. Not rocket science, nor insightful.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUKN0228397020080506?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews
My web domain.
all MS executives residing over the oxygen-starvation era are already booked for their trip to hell.
let him stay at MS, he's doing a wonderful job of navigating them toward the rocks
more chairs
I think you might be on to something.
Microsoft can tank Yahoo's stock for next to nothing. Then wind up buying the company for less. Actually, it's pretty smart.
The bottom line is, Yahoo should not have let itself get in this situation.
Operating System Market Share, Top Operating System Share Trend [May 5, 2008]
Vista has seen 9% growth since June 07. The MacIntel 2%. Linux 0.3%.
but how bout we compare its lifespan to ANY other OS release
How do you define release and how do you define lifespan?
That of the Cheetah (2001)? The Puma (2001)? The Jaguar (2002)? The Panther (2003)? The Tiger (2005)? The Leopard (2007)?
People buy into the bullshit marketing. Its not that the product has merit.
The "sour grapes" argument.
It saves the trouble of looking for any deeper explanation when your product barely shows a pulse. 0.67% of the desktop isn't much of a showing for ten years work.
...under his fantastic leadership Microsoft will soon be dead.
Someone else could manage to get them up and running as a serious competition.
--
Post intended funny... your result may vary.
Has anyone else wondered how Ray Ozzie worked himself up so far in the MS food chain? I mean, he had a semi-interesting web site that he used to hype himself as the expert of the internet in MS circles. Yet, everything they've done since he came on board has been floundering crap.
This is my sig.
Zing!
Maybe that is where the monkey dance came from?
This fucking jew needs to go. Microsoft don't need him.
CEO does not go about spending that kind of money without the approval of major stockholders.
Let's review the chain of command: CEO reports to the Board of Directors. Nowhere in there is your vanilla NASDAQ stock holder.
Now, in theory this should work, but in practice, the CEO normally votes people onto the board of directors. So, you have your buddies on the board "managing" the CEO where after the boring corporate procedures are over, everyone parties. So, it's quite reasonable to assume Ballmer comes up with a crackpot scheme to acquire yahoo and waste everyone's time on it and the BOD be quite satisfied with his managerial acumen.
It's also a complete fallacy that shares outstanding somehow means these share holders can exert some influence. That's a lesson for another day...
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
This is interesting to watch. Basically, Slashdotters mostly want Microsoft to fail. They revile Ballmer, partly as a result of this rivalry. As a result, they want Ballmer to go.
That's not really logical, though, is it? If he's so bad, and you hate Microsoft, then shouldn't you want him to stay? Let him run the company into the ground.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Oh how frustrating when the mighty haven't fallen.
Vista is not wowing critics. Nevertheless, 140 million PCs have sold with paid copies installed. Granted, some of those buyers may in fact be clamoring to keep using XP...But Microsoft's problems are merely normal challenges for a still-growing behemoth.
At the Motley Fool, Rick Aristotle Munarriz titled his recent article "I Spit on Vista's Grave." The best part was his lead paragraph, in which he asked "What do the future of computing, a hurricane-ravaged home, and Fred Flintstone's car have in common?" The answer, of course: no Windows. He suggests that Windows is fundamentally in trouble.
Give me a break.
Yes, Wall Street expected the company division that sells Windows to have higher revenue than it did last quarter. Results in the group were distorted by unusually high revenues and profits a year earlier...And sales may have subsequently slowed.
But those dollars flowed in because the product sold a lot, not a little, albeit much later and with fewer features than originally planned. Plus, the Vista disappointments are relatively minor in the larger scheme of things. The company projects a level of operating income for the current quarter which would mean that by the end of the June 30 fiscal year the total would be a minimum of $22.6 billion. That's not only a lot of moolah by any standard, but would represent a 22.1% increase over the previous fiscal year. Your list of $60 billion companies with profit growth that healthy is likely to be rather short.
Let's just say for a minute that you could somehow convince yourself that the Windows business, which in the "disappointing" last quarter threw off $4 billion in operating profit, is at risk of drying up entirely. It's salutary to remember that this group only represents about 27% of company revenue. Microsoft has done a phenomenal job diversifying into a wide range of software businesses.
Says Gates: "Exchange is out there cleaning up, SharePoint is out there cleaning up, doing super, super well." He's referring to the company's messaging software product line as well as SharePoint, an unheralded and little-appreciated dark horse in the company's arsenal.
SharePoint has evolved far from its roots as a mere corporate collaboration tool. Now it encompasses a full range of functions a company of any size might need for creating and maintaining applications on the Web. That means everything from a big-time corporate Web portal to your workgroup's document-sharing site. SharePoint this year will surpass $1 billion in revenues, getting to that scale faster than any product in Microsoft's history. But don't forget - according to the blogosphere, Ballmer is screwing up.
Speculation on whether or not Microsoft will succeed in buying Yahoo, and then integrating it, is rampant. It's a gutsy move and by far the company's largest attempted acquisition ever. Such deals are fraught with peril.
Those who sneer at Ballmer's supposed ineptitude or, as Wired puts it, "mismanagement," are simply engaging in speculation and armchair quarterbacking. They also show a poor understanding of internal dynamics at Microsoft. The real strategist behind the Yahoo assault is Kevin Johnson, who heads the group responsible for Online Services (and who also oversees Windows). Ballmer was sufficiently confident that "KJ," as he's known, could handle this project that two weeks ago he took a trip to the Amazon which put him completely out of touch with the office for days.
Ballmer, of course, remains the chief corporate strategist and the ultimate decision-maker. But the grown-up company he now heads, soon even to be sans Bill Gates, is one far more decentralized and well-managed than any version that has come before.
It is simply false to say Microsoft is in real trouble.
Microsoft: Decidedly not R.I.P. [May 2, 2008]
(Sung to the tune of "Since You Been Gone" by Rainbow.)
Whhooaa, whhooaa, whhooaaaa
I throw the same old chair, same time every night
Falls to the ground and I kick it
I start my laptop up, wait for an hour, and Vista's there
Thoughts fly back to the cock-ups
The Vista sales are closing in
Look at the fix Yahoo's put me in
Since Yahoo's gone, since Yahoo's gone
Thrown my last chair, can't take it
Could I be wrong, but Service Pack 1
Doesn't fix Vista but breaks it
Oooohhh - Whhooooaaa - Ooooohhh
Since Yahoo's gone
And Games For Windows Live, we charge a monthly fee
But PC gamers won't pay for it
I gave them DirectX, version 10's come around too soon
They won't buy Vista to try it
You Linux users, your Ubuntu
Just ganging up on me like Yahoo
Since Yahoo's gone, since Yahoo's gone
Thrown my last chair, can't take it
Could I be wrong, but Service Pack 1
Doesn't fix Vista but breaks it
Oooohhh - Whhooooaaa - Ooooohhh
Since Yahoo's gone
[INTERLUDE]
If Yahoo comes back
Billy you know
I'll never do wrong
Huhhhhh
Since Yahoo's gone, since Yahoo's gone
Thrown my last chair, can't take it
Could I be wrong, but Service Pack 1
Doesn't fix Vista but breaks it
Oooohhh - Whhooooaaa - Ooooohhh
Ever since, Yahoo's gone
[GUITAR SOLO OUTRO]
Since Yahoo's gone, since Yahoo's gone
Thrown my last chair, can't take it
Since Yahoo's gone, since Yahoo's gone
[FADE]
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
'"Uh uh, Bill. Iraq has the fifth largest army in the world"
Yeah, but there's a hell of a big drop off after the third. The Hari Krishna's have the fourth largest army and they already own half our airports.'
But we knew that already. That's why we don't make good CEO's, and often not even good managers.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The man is so obviously bad for MS that the only thing worth doing is to keep him on. I would even go as far as to say promote him, but I don't think that is possible any more.
A man with such vision should have much more day to day control over how projects go, for the good of us all. Without Me II, I would never have moved to Ubuntu full time, and I credit Ballmer for a large part of that.
The man is a genius, and we will sing his praises for years. Keep up the good work Stevie.
-Charlie
"Does Ballmer Need To Go?" With that headline I swear I was preparing myself for the "Excuse me, do you have Ballmer in a can?" jokes.
Have you guys actually ever tried to port a Win32 application to anything else? It's a nightmare. Even their C library isn't standards compliant (see sprintf for instance), let alone that their APIs don't map cleanly to anything else becuase they are all twisted and distorted by 15 years of being faithful to bad designs.
I don't think you guys understand that none of their applications can be ported to other systems without a herculean effort. They are all inextricably tied to windows, by design.
NoScript reports 13 piggyback domains, which I am expected to allow to run script for visiting techcrunch. What site am I visiting here? Ditch the third party content, it's tanking web security.
But first, we need to invent a Time Machine so that we can retroactively go back to the mid-90s and fire them then.
There's no point firing him now: the virus is too deeply embedded, and not even AVG will root it out.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Running mate for McCain? following in the Dick Cheney tradition of dark lord of the underworld?
Take over for Castro in Cuba?
Still time for a new manager of the Olympic Games in China. (or compete in the 500m chair toss.)
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Depends on how you take the analogy. After all, in the nominal case, you have a completely legitimate claim on the money the ATM gives you (it's yours). So, maybe they meant that the EU is taking the money it is owed, but that this does present a challenge to whoever is running Microsoft when the "withdrawals" occur?
Haha, but seriously. Sounds more to me like the whole "being punished for success" line wrt the original US DOJ vs MS case... basically requires not knowing anything about why the legal action is taking place. And I guess if you don't know anything about ATMs, some guy taking a hand full of cash from the machine would seem pretty sketchy.
The enemies of Democracy are
I thought MS tried to beat Yahoo and Google and couldn't hack it. Isn't that the real failure, the inability to "innovate"?
Cannabis and Opium are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
(ironically something Alcohol has never done)
best chance to use 'defenestrated' in a headline ever. Save that for when he actually *does* leave the company!
Cheers,
Matt
Noooo! Don't let him go!
He's chewing on Microsoft from within, leaving us to watch the monster scream and finally collapse!
positive cash flow does not mean that investors are satisfied with the return. They could put their money in another investment and get a higher ROI. Yahoo's funding will dry up and it's stock price will crash. Microsoft can then snap it up. Additionally, yahoo is still in a growth phase despite the positive cash flow. They won't last long if they cannot raise new capital.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I don't think so. If, say, some other OS were to somehow come to dominate "the desktop", IMHO Dell & HP, et al would quickly roll with that and offer it on their hardware. The Vista vs XP debacle has proven that the OEMs don't care what they have to load to make product move across the shelves. Dell for one is _already_ selling (some) machinery with Linux pre-installs, and would probably be selling more if the Empire didn't limit them to "hobbyist" numbers under their OEM extortion plan<M-Del><M-Del>"agreement".
Can you say: 'prostitute'?
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
"You tell him"
"No, *you* tell him"
nothing outside of the Windows OS has been successful and by that I mean been profitable. Only with the writing off $1 billion last year has the XBox division been able to show a $90 million "profit" last quarter. With the billions spent on Xbox development, the billions already lost in the market, and the current growth rate we won't see the Xbox getting into the black in over 10 years if ever.
IMO, the only thing Balmer has been able to do is sustain a monopoly. And he had the balls to call Google a "one trick pony".
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
What you think?
I think bill gates is behind the ballmer and he suggest to ballmer and ballmer is not alone.
How funny that the one that chanted it repeatedly in an infamous net video, is now standing alone with no developers nor employees on his side.
Could it be that *gasp* he doesn't know what he's doing? Microsoft used to be a great company...the only reason they're still around is due to their outdated operating systems (XP, 2000, Server 2003) as Vista is going nowhere, and Office 2007 isn't either. They had better get a new CEO fast, or at least a new business model.
They're in different industries. Microsoft is a software company. Apple is a fashion company..
Are you sure you didn't confuse fashion and fashionable?
Tweet, tweet.
I think Microsoft should keep Ballmer as CEO. He is a miserable failure. In the 1940s, the British MI6 had plans to assassinate Hitler during an opera performance, a sports event or similar, but they decided against it since they were afraid someone *competent* might replace the utterly useless Führer. It's a similar situation with Ballmer, minus the assassination bit, obviously.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Wii and Gmail.
Compare (trying to find all possible causes for time blinking on a Polycom IP650):
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=polycom+ip650+time+blink&btnG=Search
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=polycom+ip650+time+blink&go=&form=QBHP
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think he was trying to leverage cross-functional organizational synergies in order to boldy smash existing paradigms.
I've been saying Ballmer should go every since his "Microsoft stock is overvalued!" statement. As CEO, your job description is definately NOT to drive down the price of your companies stock! If I were on the MS board of directors, I would have attempted to give Steve his walking papers then and there. The Yahoo deal certainly wasn't Steve's first major fuckup!
Seattle, September 23, 1999â"Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft Corp., told more than 60 technology journalists Thursday that technology stocks â"including Microsoftâ(TM)s sharesâ"were overvalued.
Ballmer spoke at the third annual Technology Conference of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers at Cavanaughs on Fifth Ave. Hotel in Seattle. The conference ends Friday.
During a question-and-answer session after a speech on Microsoftâ(TM)s vision for the future, Ballmer said technology stocks were overvalued compared with the stock market as a whole.
âoeThere is such an overvaluation of technology stocks that it is absurd,â said Ballmer. âoeI would include our stock in that category. It is bad for the long-term worth of the economy.â
When asked what the value of Microsoftâ(TM)s stock should be, Ballmer answered, âoeLess."
Traded on Nasdaq, Microsoftâ(TM)s stock opened at $96 7/8 and closed at $91 3/16, a 5.1 percent loss. At one point, the stock dropped to $90 1/64.
Because of Ballmerâ(TM)s comments, the Nasdaq index, which is weighted with tech stocks, closed at 2749.83, down 108 points or 3.77 percent. The reverberations were felt across the entire stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,318.59, down 205.48 points on Thursday. Other indices fell as well.
When you look at Apple's revenue growth for the last couple years, a P/E of 38 isn't really extraordinary... Apple's business is growing like a market upstart.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
True, Balmer is a pit stained idiot who often speaks without first engaging his brain but blaming Vista all on Balmer just does not fly. The problem with Vista has been the keeping of outdated code in the OS. Bill Gates was always proud to say the what ever version of the OS was released it would still run old DOS1.0 programs. Longhorn was Microsofts Copland. When Apple was developing Copland as the be all of the new Mac OS, features were being added, taken away, changed but the product never seemed to move ahead. Apple scraped Copland when Steve came back and used his NextStep to make OS X. Microsoft never scraped Longhorn as they should have. Having emulation to run the last OS's software while having a new better OS has been the way to go and Apple has do it right. Going by the reviews of PC magazines Intel Macs run Windows better. Get the best from both worlds with one computer. I have more Windows boxes than Macs but my most trouble free windows machine is my Mac laptop and I am A+,N+, MCP, MCSE certified.
Kind of funny how Slashdot, and all MS haters in general, all seem to think anyone will honestly listen to their "heartfelt" advice about what would be best for MS to do.
We all just KNOW you would like to see Balmer go because you want to see MS do so well. Sure! Right!
BTW, even though Slashdot keeps beating the drum that Vista was somehow a "disaster", it's been pretty damn successful, and is still one of the best and most secure OS's out there. In the recent "Pwn to Own" contest, Apple's Leoptard was hacked almost two days before Vista, and teh Lunix machine fell shortly after that. In fact... when Vista was hacked, they didn't even hack Vista, they used an Adobe Flash exploit.
Also, it's worth remembering that Vista's install base exceeded the total install base of anyone who has EVER used Teh Lunix on it's very first day of commercial release. And by the same token, there are more people using the iPhone than there are using Teh Lunix.
So no matter what measure one tries to use to gauge success... Vista will still end up being far more successful than Teh Lunix can even dream of being.
As for whether Balmer is good or not... I fail to see how this is bad for Microsoft. Yahoo looks really bad, Jerry Yang will likely be outsed by Yahoo's shareholders for F'ing up the MS deal... and Wall Street seems to think MS looks smart for walking away from a horrible deal. Just look at what happened this weekend: Last Friday, MS closed at 29.24... and opened Monday at around 30 (the failed buyout was announced over the weekend). So investors seemed to think the failed buyout was actually GOOD for MS.
Now compare what Yahoo looked like: Last Friday, Yahoo closed at 28.67. On Monday, it opened at... around 23. Which company looks better? MS actually went UP from the failed deal, while Yahoo tanked.
As celebrated American philosopher Kenneth Rogers once said:
You got to know when to hold em,
know when to fold em,
know when to walk away,
and know when to run.
Looks to everyone that MS knows when to walk away... while Yahoo doesn't know how to set their greed or egos aside. Unless you hate Microsoft, that is. On Slashdot, ALL news about Microsoft will somehow be twisted into being bad for Microsoft, even when it's not. ESPECIALLY when it's not.
Also... this deal forced Google into making a deal with Yahoo which will be investigated by the US Justice Department, and who knows what other horrible deals people were cutting with Yahoo? Overall, it put MS in a far better position over their competitors (and in a really short time!), and all it cost them was the fees of the M&A attorneys. Sounds like a GENIUS move on Balmer's part to me.
It would actually be nice if Slashdot were a tech news site, rather than an MS-hate news site.
I think it is hilarious how you guys get so deranged when you see the M$ abbreviation. In fact you don't spell Microsoft "MS", that is most commonly an abbreviation for Multiple Sclerosis. I never used to but I now make sure I use that abbreviation as much as possible, because your knee-jerk reactions are so hilarious.
M$ is a company in Seattle. It makes M$ Windows. M$ was run by Bill Gates but now the president is Ballmer. M$ is a very large company. M$ has some low-level employees who feel that their great company is insulted because somebody used a punctuation mark in an abbreviation and thus makes the horrible grivious insulting impression that M$ might have something to do with *money*, when in fact M$ is a totally benevolent act of god.
OK, seriously. Someone who makes a clueless -- and somewhat incisive -- comment like "Apple is a fasion company" gets modded up, and pointing out (if subtly) the very real difference between:
(a) the fact that Apple's products are currently fasionable
(b) the idea that their product priorities are like Saks
and that gets modded down?
I understand that it's also very fashionable to complain about "apple fanboism" on slashdot these days, and if I were trolling I could make some exceptionally pointed comments about some common problems with that stripe of criticism. But in particular, I think it's pretty clear the anti-Apple sentiment has about the same hold in any groupthink that's present.
Tweet, tweet.
Thus, minor players make no sense in search.
All searching is free to the user, so the only place where the there is any competition is in the cost to advertisers and this is self regulating because there is still competition from other media. If Google charge too much for their search ads, then the advertisers will just go spend their advertising dollars in glossy magazines or on CNN.com and other places.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
He must have had the blessing of at least Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and probably oth
A couple days before they announced the attempted takeover of Yahoo!, Bill Gates did a talk at a conference where he asked for a kinder, gentler form of capitalism.
Now, the irony is painful, and I didn't understand it until the Yahoo! takeover play was announced. This was Bill Gates' way of saying, "I don't agree with this, but Steve is the CEO and I'm not going to tell the CEO what to do - he'll thrive or fail on his own merits."
Regardless, Microsoft will be back for blood unless Yahoo! spins off Zimbra. I think the Yahoo! board was shocked when Microsoft walked away from $37, and now Microsoft will engage in stock price destruction until it feels it can go no lower, then do the hostile takeover. Yahoo! played hardball and lost.
You want the most vicious, gut-ripping, back-stabbing, ball-cutting executive you can find.
Yep, Steve Ballmer would make a good llama.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
After watching the rants and the FUD spewed by the Monkey Boy over the years I still can't to this day believe that someone put HIM in charge. So no matter how he got the job,IMHO MSFT would be better off without him. But that is my 02c,YMMV
Oh,and whether you hate him or think he is a genius,IMHO Microsoft just doesn't work without Gates. IMHO Microsoft needs Gates just like Apple needs Jobs,because without the big guys running the show they just suck. But again,my 02c, so it may be just me.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I can't be certain you're not telling the truth but the story you tell sounds caricatural and simplistic. Machiavelical Ballmer and foolish Gates? Nah. I don't buy it.
PS: To Gates/Ballmer: You owe me. Send me some money. I'm tired of being poor. If you don't, I will bash you on Slashdot and bring about the year of Linux on the desktop. You don't want that, do you?
I agree that $200 computers are more good than bad. Software is cheap to replicate and if you sell 300 million copies at $99 a pop, you make more than if you sell 100 million at $199. In fact, that's the very logic behind OEM pricings vs retail.
I disagree that microsoft can't create a superior product to OSX or Linux. Microsoft is still very popular, especially outside the U.S, and they can pay well and have a good system in place to find young talent as they partner with countless learning institutes around the world.
Furthermore, there are many O.S dogs at M$. They might have been leashed by compatibility policies (What a stupid idea. If people want to run their old software, let them keep the same old O.S or allow them to use a virtual environment a la Parallels to run it. Microsoft have all their source code so it should be easy to match or exceed what Parallels and others have achieved. Problem solved damnit!) but they are still champs and if management really tries to make a great O.S first and money second, I have no doubt that the microsofties will give Apple and Linux hell and my money would be on them.
If Microsoft can come up with win7 or win8 and make something that runs applications as well as directX runs games (including directsound, networking and directInput) compared to openGL, Cocoa, glide, etc, we will all bow and shut up.
Til then, i'm getting a crunchy, delicious Mac.
I spent a year and a half working at Microsoft as the result of an acquisition, and I think I can answer that. Microsoft wants to be not just Google, but also because they just don't know when to say "enough." They don't know where to stop and be content with having a bunch of widely used stuff, being the market leader, and being at the center of a healthy infrastructure that grows up around those products. Rather, Microsoft's corporate culture dictates that *everthing* has to be Microsoft-branded. If they don't/can't/don't want to make it, they'll acquire a company that does. That's how I wound up there. Using Non-Microsoft products at work is really discouraged and I rarely saw anyone doing it. I even had to stop using a Linux machine and actually use the POS Toshiba Tecra M4 with XP Tablet Edition they issued me. Of course, that machine would have been a POS running Linux, too, I'm pretty sure.
Add to that the constant propaganda stream telling everyone how great MSFT and its products are (if you've never been to a cafeteria on the Redmond campus, the amount of propaganda there is a real eye-opener), and you can see how Microsoft is the way it is. The Microsoft Research campus in Mountain View is more low-key, but it's still a fairly branded place.
This all goes back to the personalities of the people who founded the company and built its corporate culture. I'd call the culture generally negative. It's somewhat pathological, very closed-minded to technologies it didn't invent or buy, truly believes (or claims to believe; I go with the latter) that Microsoft products are better than any others in the marketplace, and that Microsoft is destined to always rule. It's like a sort of corporate Manifest Destiny.
That doesn't mean a culture like that can't be successful in the marketplace - obviously, it has - but I believe it runs into sustainability/scalability issues and MSFT reached that point already a while ago. Vista was a product of that, I believe, and it is a failure. Sure, Vista has made and will make money because MSFT is able to ship it pre-installed on most new Windows PCs now and in the future on all of them after XP is finally killed off, but we can still define it as a failure. Vista is a product that few people would buy if they had a choice. Most of those on XP plan to remain on it for as long as XP is supported and maybe even after that (look how long Win 98 hung around) and many of those buying new PCs would choose XP over Vista if they could. Vista shipped as a pretty much unwanted OS. That's a failure, even if it's a failure they still make money off of. It's an abject mindshare failure, and when MSFT has a mindshare failure of the magnitude of Vista, it's in trouble. Even if it's still making boatloads of money, it's in trouble.
Ballmer's fault. In part, but he's not the only one that makes that culture. Should they dump him? I hope not. A MSFT in trouble is a MSFT that's good for the rest of the industry.
Ballmer personifies and promotes the extremely damaging image of Microsoft as an arrogant, belligerent behemoth whose only ideas involve buying some else's work. For an industry that prizes creative talent, what is the logic to having an anti-talent CEO at the helm that can only think with mouth and wallet? How do you think this impacts recruiting? Sure, there are lots of (starving) applicants, or applicants wanting to hone up before jumping to Google or Amazon. But who writes off Microsoft from the get-go, simply because they are good enough to have that choice? Those are the people you don't want to have go elsewhere, and guess what? They do. HR should wake up, and get with the program. Google started in a garage with two guys...and an idea. At that very moment, Ballmer had legions of 'developers, developers, developers'. So what is the equation for success? Two guys with an idea vs tens of thousands of Microsoft developers that can slap a whiteboard full of code...and slap the crap out of the code base with their damn bugs, gunned in just like in the interview. You get what you interview for (surprise!). I have received intense push back on the idea that team members need to know their product, competitors, and have ideas for making the product better. For the most part, internal awareness does not exist at Microsoft. Most are squirreled away in their little dlls or microscopic code base, and that's as far as they can see or even want to. These are who are selected. Microsoft needs to interview for creativity, and ideas. Passion for technology is fine, but what has the candidate done with their passion? What have they innovated lately? How would they improve the product this team is interviewing for? No no no...its "slap a linked list or hash table on the board & join Ballmer's other developers developers developers". Now and then, there is a huge company meeting, with lots of useless entertainment, and embarrassing displays by the CEO. Most softies can't name 5 products the company makes, and the CEO decides the best thing it to do about it is to jump around on a stage. That needs to be replaced with a different kind of company meeting, one that requires each product team to present their wares as if at a trade show. Such would increase the awareness of the average Joe and Jane about whats going on around them, and encourage cross-pollination. Hell, just preparing their own presentation would likely clue them in on just what the heck they have been working on for the past year...for the first time. Change the CEO, update the screening process for crying out loud; its working in reverse, and get the company together annually to present to each other. Grow the damn company, like it was day 1, because in this business, every day is.