Slashdot Mirror
Steve Ballmer's Head On the Block?
mix77 writes "Influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn has called for Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to step down, saying the world's largest software company's long-time leader is stuck in the past."
we're talking about that damn elephant in the room.
Let him drive it to the ground, baby.
Soon, a chair found stuck into Einhorn's head (dann, ein genauer Horn).
He's just clinging embarrassingly to others' visions of the future.
Hey, MS, you made it big with a smart desktop. Don't follow Google and return us to an era of dumb terminals for hire, please.
And not every one of us is taken in by Apple's overpriced shine. Work out why you have 90%+ desktop marketshare instead of turning your back on it to chase the remaining 10%.
Thanks.
Developers!
Developers!
Developers!
Develpers!
Develpers!
Please!
Why is Snark Required?
Microsoft is not going to be changing its stripes any time soon, no matter who is at the helm.
From TFA (emphasis mine):
So, this guy's company buys a bunch of Microsoft stock, then utters a (probably popular) opinion that the head of Microsoft should resign. Is Einhorn just pissed that the stock hasn't moved, or is he trying to manipulate the price through the media?
"...saying the world's largest software company's long-time leader is stuck in the past."
Heh. Speaking of Steve Ballmer and being stuck in the past, isn't it about time for a flying chair joke?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Long ago Microsoft pwnd the planets desktop ecosystem space. After that, until we make contact with ET growth is going to naturally be limited. Microsoft should have transitioned from growth mode to stable mode and started paying out dividends to stock holders. The attempts to levarage into other markets are going to a) cost a lot and b) come under anti-trust scrutiny.
There comes a point when a corporate giant should just be happy with what they have got and give up the raiding, and make their space the best it can be.
The only question is location...
Ballmer seems to be following the Gates tradition of "massive amounts of technology" combined with a complete, utter, lack of imagination and inability to accurately anticipate technological trends. Hopefully, there's someone who can do the latter that isn't just an "I've discovered smartphones!" kind of guy.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
where a hedge fund manager made a change of management in a large publicly held company and that company got better?
Microsoft just bought Nokia for $0 Billion. He's doing OK.
obviously he will be gone by Monday. Who after all could withstand such a damning slashdot article.
God!! Can't we get a new MS icon. No one under 25 understands the borg reference!!! Bill isn't even in charge anymore!!
Never mind the past get em back into the stone age ..
but make sure balls up ballmer stays with em
Ballmer owns 4.75% of the company (408 million shares) versus Einhorn with 0.11% of the company (his 9 million shares).
Einhorn has a lot of work ahead of him to convince other activist investors to side with him, but still the stock was up on the news that Einhorn had taken a position in MSFT - which is good for Einhorn. Furthermore, it's free publicity for his activist campaign. Good luck to him, he'll need it.
We need an enterprising financial reporter to write the book on how Microsoft with infinite financial and technical resources and starting from a commanding market share managed to completely lose the smart phone business. Gates is so rich he doesn't care but why aren't the other shareholders screaming bloody murder?
This is probably a Win-Win for Microsoft no matter how you look at it.
On one hand if he does step down they get a new leader and can use that momentum to propel them forward. All new product are great because their next deity blessed them. Not to mention the free press!
or
If he does not step down it shows that Ballmer is in it for the long run and they get tons of free press.
It would behoove them to drag this out as long as possible.
If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!
Yes, of course, Steve Ballmer has many faults and has made many decisions I might disagree with, but a hedge fund manager is the last person we want advising technology companies. All this worm understands is balance sheets and returns on investment. Technology requires a lot of risky research whose advantages may not be readily apparent. Let a bean-counter in and you end up with Apple-under-John-Sculley. Some people should really stick to selling sugared water. Go ye crawling back to Wall Street.
Windows, Office, Xbox, those are all bread winners and they are not going away. So what if they are a bit late to the Tablet and Phone business? It's funny how "mobile" technology enthusiasts are so edgy and angry all the time.
The reason MS has been lagging on innovation is that they are still the dominant player in office apps and in consumer operating systems. MS executives and engineers are used to sleeping soundly at night. Google has innovated because they were a new company and need to come up with something fast. Apple innovated because if they kept on selling OS 9 on Motorola they would have gone out of business five years ago. IBM got out of the retail space and focused on being a computer science company.
There is not a lot of room for growth or innovation at the top. Look at GM, AT&T, Disney, Boeing, PanAm and other former industry leaders. They get too comfortable to innovate. Suddenly new players are entering their markets and they are late to see that the competition is better. As for the hedge fund managers comments. I would take them with a grain of salt. He obviously has put a fair amount of his clients money in MS. Is he really long on MS, or just trying to stir up enough controversy that he can dislodge SB and make a few million on the bump?
Call Jobs to head MS!
I hope there isn't a movement within Microsoft to jump on the bandwagon of dumbing down and "simplifying" their desktop environment so that it looks like it would be right at home on a tablet, netbook, or other mobile devices.
If being stuck in the past means having a fully featured, straightforward desktop environment then consider me an old timer who refuses to change with the times.
I do not like Gnome Shell. I do not like Unity. I do not want Windows to move in that direction.
I think people are seriously underestimating the importance and continued usage of desktops and laptops in the future. We will not all be using tablets.
If /. ever had a need for a "Like" button this is the article that needs it.
WHAT FORTUNE CAN EFFECT IN HUMAN AFFAIRS AND HOW TO
WITHSTAND HER
[...]
Changes in estate also issue from this, for if, to one who governs
himself with caution and patience, times and affairs converge in such a
way that his administration is successful, his fortune is made; but if
times and affairs change, he is ruined if he does not change his course
of action. But a man is not often found sufficiently circumspect to know
how to accommodate himself to the change, both because he cannot deviate
from what nature inclines him to do, and also because, having always
prospered by acting in one way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well
to leave it; and, therefore, the cautious man, when it is time to turn
adventurous, does not know how to do it, hence he is ruined; but had he
changed his conduct with the times fortune would not have changed.
"The Prince", Nicolo Machiavelli
So what we have is one of the financial mis-management types who continue to wreak havoc on the US economy calling the guy who is badly managing one of the least innovative companies in the software world "stuck in the past."
As little as I like Ballmer or Microsoft, pal, at least THEY have contributed something: operating systems, software and even some hardware.
What have YOU done Einhorn?
Helped cripple the US economy by placing more value on the money to be extracted from a target company than the products and services a target company can provide?
Hmmm, Einhorn:
Isn't your company based in the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying taxes to the US government, David?
There's a whole bunch of really rich people who are about to rip into each other and I don't want to miss ANYTHING!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...is also about to shell out $200 million for a share of the New York Mets, I have to question his evaluation abilities.
I mean that show a smart and sound in investor. Let's buy a share in a team that is a money pit that will give me no say in the operations. He must really be in touch with the current times, because the Mets haven't made any money in years.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
It's not "massive amounts of technology" so much as "shady business practices" that Gates is well known for. This has changed significantly over the past ten or fifteen years, partly due to the anti-trust ruling. Once that has expired, Microsoft can go back to throwing their weight around in the industry again. I don't know if Ballmer is the same level of business genius that Gates was. But he's certainly not moving the company in any other direction though.
The lack of imagination and technological foresight part is otherwise fairly accurate. Individual employees might disagree, but this particular trait or the lack thereof comes out in management decisions.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
1. Bill Gates is Chairman of the Board of Directors
2. Bill Gates is Microsoft's largest shareholder
3. Steve Ballmer was Best Man at Bill Gates' wedding
Unless Steve Ballmer gets hit by a bus, he isn't going anywhere.
We're moving into the post-PC world at breakneck speed - anyone who doesn't see this has their head stuck into the sand just as far as the 68K workstation guys in the 80's. "PCs will never take over - they're too blah blah blah". You hear the same refrain now from people with a vested interest in Wintel desktop PCs, even as consumers are moving en-mass to mobile and tablet computing.
Mobile and tablet computing is taking over from the consumer PC for most people who don't want to deal with the hassles of a Windows PC, and all of Microsoft's monopoly advantages disappear in this new world. They have to compete on a level playing field, and they are too slow moving, stodgy, and slow to do that. They can no longer leverage their early desktop monopoly.
The move to mobile will kill Microsoft just as the move away from big iron killed a bunch of companies that seemed like they would be around forever. Some of those companies exist in name only or as sub-sub-sub divisions of something that bought the company that bought them, but we can fairly consider them "dead".
Don't worry...soon, Steve will reveal that Einhorn is Finkle.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Balmer stepping down isn't going to help. Microsoft needs direction. Bill Gates provided that direction, just like Steve Jobs provides the direction for Apple. Say what you want - both of them are ruthless businessmen who have a clear direction and set the company on the right path.
Unless Microsoft has a boss who can actually guide the company then it doesn't make any difference whether Balmer's in charge or not.
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Off with his head! Long live the Steve! Um...
I honestly don't know why people publish this stuff.
Now, thanks to the press, there will be a bump in MSFT prices, and the hedge fund manager is laughing all the way to the bank.
It's already expired.
The reason MS has been lagging on innovation is that they are still the dominant player in office apps and in consumer operating systems. MS executives and engineers are used to sleeping soundly at night. Google has innovated because they were a new company and need to come up with something fast. Apple innovated because if they kept on selling OS 9 on Motorola they would have gone out of business five years ago. IBM got out of the retail space and focused on being a computer science company.
There is not a lot of room for growth or innovation at the top. Look at GM, AT&T, Disney, Boeing, PanAm and other former industry leaders. They get too comfortable to innovate. Suddenly new players are entering their markets and they are late to see that the competition is better. As for the hedge fund managers comments. I would take them with a grain of salt. He obviously has put a fair amount of his clients money in MS. Is he really long on MS, or just trying to stir up enough controversy that he can dislodge SB and make a few million on the bump?
If I had points, I'd mod you up. What you are describing is known in business terms as the "fat cat syndrome." Businesses become so successful that future products are evaluated not as to what they can do to benefit the company, but instead how they will cut into existing product lines. IBM was the biggest example of this back in the 70s and 80s.
For IBM, they purposely held down the PC because it was a threat to their mini computer and later small main frame business. The arrogantly made the statement that they would have to sell a lot of PCs to make the profit from one System 36. True, but very short sighted. The whole PS/2 line was an attempt to treat the PC as a technology platform like the System 36.
Meanwhile, since IBM was no longer "leading" in the field, others stepped up and took the control away from them. Microsoft is in the same boat. There is nothing in Google or Amazon or whomever that MIcrosoft couldn't have done or didn't have the resources to do. Instead, they want/wanted to protect their current product line (Windows and Office). Of course, now that the market is saturated, at least in the West, so that PCs are now commodity priced, there is no growth left in Microsoft's core products. Nor can those products provide the substantial returns needed to provide the future resources.
The only place Microsoft has not followed this method is with their XBox. They continue to introduce new technologies, plus their pricing model is very different. With the XBox, they initially loss money on each XBox sold, but made it up from commissions from the game producers for each game sold. They no longer lose money on the hardware side of the XBox, but it is still well below the ROI on most technology products and relies heavily on game sales commissions to generate revenue.
One reason that lead to this with the XBox is that there is/was substantial competition in the market place. This did not/does not exist in their PC offerings. Yes, there is competition, but not substantial competition. With smart phones, Microsoft is coming late to the game. Usually, in a technology, this is bad. However, the phone market changes so quickly, that it can be an advantage, if Microsoft learns from other's mistakes and adds features not found but wanted elsewhere. There is a good chance that the phone market can support 3 different platforms. This does not bode well for RIM as they will most likely be impacted than iOS and Android, but time will tell.
The fat cat syndrome has seen many once profitable, at the top of the world, companies falter. What happened to Lotus, or Ashton Tate or even Wordperfect? HP, Compaq, AST, etc., are just shadows of what they once were. Like IBM, all of these companies fell victim to protective decisions. Basically, these companies, and Microsoft, are trying to use a prevent defense as in American Football. The problem with that tactic is that it allows the other side, th
The only question is location...
Ballmer seems to be following the Gates tradition of "massive amounts of technology" combined with a complete, utter, lack of imagination and inability to accurately anticipate technological trends. Hopefully, there's someone who can do the latter that isn't just an "I've discovered smartphones!" kind of guy.
Masses of technology IS anticipating trends - the Apple route of "this is the future and I will make it so" is too directed, their products always limit the user and act as though they know what is better - very often limiting technological advancement for some trivial (to most, based on market share) feature such as "how smooth is my desktop machine I will never touch aside from a few buttons" or "how seamless is my smartphone that can't even reach broadband speeds because of some idiotic licensing agreement with a carrier" - it isn't the duty of a corporate figurehead to anticipate changes and make them happen, it is their duty to be prepared for any and to do their part in advancing them.
Its a good place to be rooted in. And you go forward from there.
You think that Ballmer's position grants him control over the behemoth, but I say he is riding atop a stubborn pachyderm trying to take credit for its good fortune in some times, while drawing attention away from its mistakes and flaws at others.
The internal politics between departments and projects, conflicts in "the mind" of Microsoft, are more of an issue than the jockey flogging the lumbering beast, IMO.
Now, a smaller company, or one with less in-fighting will respond better to their leader's command... Microsoft is neither.
However, the most important issue is to realize that market price directly correlates to how good the general public feels about the company. Many people love Apple products (I am not one of them), but clearly you must see how the general public's perception of Apple differers from that of Microsoft, and is irregardless of these companies actual real world worth. So goes the stock price -- irregardless of the actual worth of the company. (Of course worth is subjective, but stock price is not a good estimate -- it swings wildly even due to rumors or bad press, how can that be directly representative of how much stuff you sell? -- It's not.)
To move stock MS will have to do interesting and exciting things, more like their Kinect and XBox Live -- Not appealing to the desires of the general public makes your stock less appealing. Most people aren't excited about going to a "cloud", or using Word or Excel (even via a cloud).
To put it another way -- I don't usually watch TV, but when I do see it invariably there is an Apple iPhone or iPad commercial -- They show off many interesting applications, and then say: "That cool stuff is what our product is" In other-words: The device is sold by its apps -- most of which they don't even create themselves, they are leveraging their applications to lend them more "worth" in the public's perspective.
It's all about marketing -- I've yet to see a Microsoft commercial where a college kid is playing a game on XBL and says, "Awesome game...". Perhaps then his friend at the PC says, "Thanks, I thought you'd say that", then has a close up on the Windows7 OS, with XNA Game Studio, "Hey, tell me what you think of the sequel" Then cuts to them both playing what was on the PC, on the XBox360 sans controllers using the Kinect. (No -- instead I see a self deprecating commercial about a lonely kid playing movies in the hallway via his W7 notebook while his room-mate gets his fuck on -- this sends the wrong message to hormone crazed college kids -- the market they were targeting via the ad.)
Now that there is some malware for OSX (trojans, really, but so is most MS malware), I would expect to see a parody of Apple's Mac vs PC ads wherein Mac has a cold, and sneezes on PC, then a team of hot nurses replaces PC's coat and leaves in a puff of disinfectant aerosol "You don't have that? That was just the essentials -- Microsoft Security Essentials" -- MS should show off their own AV Offerings Exclusive to MS OSs -- with free versions, available online now, and integrated with the OS.
I've yet to see a Windows commercial showing all the Applications and Games that Windows and/or their phones/tablets have, and trying to sell the tablet/phone/PC as the applications in can run (like Apple does with its tablets & phones).
For a marketing guy like Ballmer -- this should be a piece of cake, yet MS sucks at marketing, pure and simple; This is why the stock price is not higher: The stock market is based on feelings -- how do we make people feel good about having our stock? It's not because he's terrible at selling -- he sold himself as CEO to MS... Knock off the jockey and the horse will finish the race anyway, I don't see how anyone else is going to affect the real worth of MS, but they may find someone who can polish the turd better, so to speak.
TL;DR: Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ex-Galactic President, was elected for his distractive properties, as all heads of state and corporations should be.
I don't know if ballmer was involved, and I am certainly no fan of microsoft, but the kinect really was innovative. I'm not sure I could attribute anything that novel to apple. They came out with a better smartphone after Nokia, I thought sony beat them to the music player, tablets existed before apple's. So apple does a great job of polishing. Granted, microsoft should have more innovation, but thought apple just passed them in stock value, so shouldn't they have many inventions where you think, oh, apple came up with that. And AppStore is not an innovation!
From my twitter feed this morning...
" @ KIRO7Seattle Microsoft stock up slightly to $24.71 after board voted to show confidence in CEO Steve Ballmer."
Monkey Boy isnt going anywhere for quite sometime.
I'm beginning to think that locked-down Apple is infinitely more evil than M$.
Steve Ballmer's problem is that he doesn't have a huge reality distortion field like Steve Jobs.
Word of the day for Steve Ballmer: PREVARICATE, but don't quit!
Funny then that they bought the Kinekt, just like all other products they have that were good once.
... and let him retire to share old war stories with Clippy..
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
It's like saying that Al Capone was bad at being a mobster.
Microsoft is pretty much defined as a company that started at monopoly position, produces technologically mediocre or plain inadequate products and maintains its control of the market by making those products so bad, interoperability with anything else is nearly impossible. Place a smart person at the helm of such organization, and it will destroy itself by losing this advantage. Gates and Ballmer are perfect people to run Microsoft -- first is driven by realization that he is the dumbest guy among everyone he knew at Harvard, second is a corporate nobody with bad temper and overblown ego.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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The name of the company is Microsoft. Microcomputer Software. The old way of looking at computing is desktop computers. It worked very well for them when desktop computers worked, because that was the company. The new (and most likely, long-term future) way of looking at computing is the Internet. Microsoft never really got the Internet. IE only became significant years late, and only because of the desktop OS monopoly. Bing probably won't.
The requested URL
Apple has, by far, the best industrial design. Both their hardware and software are superior in this regard. Technically speaking, Apple is probably no better or worse than Microsoft, or OSS for that matter.
No, you are wrong.
Something new. I taker an mp3 player, then make a different way to control it, that IS something new.
What you, and others' seem to think is that something new means something no one has ever thought of and is built in complete isolation and doesn't use anything anyone else has ever used before.
It was nice of you to leave off the other definition that prove you are wrong. from the same good damn site:
innovate [nvet]
vb
to invent or begin to apply (methods, ideas, etc.)
[from Latin innovre to renew, from in-2 + novre to make new, from novus new]
innovative , inno
and the from oxford:
EmailCite
Text size: A
A
innovate(innovate)
Syllabification:OnOff
Pronunciation:/invt, /
verb
[no object]
make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products:
the company's failure to diversify and innovate competitively
[with object] introduce (something new, especially a product):
innovating new products, developing existing ones
Apple innovates.
and stop using 'ergo' wrong. The first part need to actually be true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Microsoft has never been an innovator... despite what they'd have us think. Their first product was a re-write of BASIC for IMSAI and DOS was "borrowed" from Seattle Computing. MS has either bought or outright stolen every product they've ever sold. What would make anyone believe that an MS executive could be a leader?
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Probably involving phrasing that includes the terms "chair" and "Einhorn's ass".
As stated before, MS can't move beyond Windows and Office.
Outside of this MS won and then lost the cell phone mobile wars very badly from having a near monopoly. Very embarrasing and bad. They lost on the tablets running WindowsXP to the Ipad. MS had a much better better vision before the Office team crippled it. The other products are too little too late, such as Bing, Zune, MS Social, etc. Now looking at the cream of the crop MS Windows/Office, Windows Vista.... no need to go further and the ribbon in Windows 2007 and Windows 2010. I personally love the ribbon after learning to get used to it in college and then discovering the alt key. Seriously, it is a unix person's dream of just hitting alt and then following the numbers/letters for the shortcuts. You can do whatever you want without the mosue or keyboard!
Windows mobile aka Windows CE had 90% of the smartphone market. Balmer watched Blackberry enter, then Apple, and then still let Andriod enter until they dipped in single digit marketshare. Now Balmer freaks out?? A little late there bud. That could have made billions. He let incompentent managers who hated progress keep their jobs developing Office and Windows bully the company while their breakfast was eaten. I mean Balmer now just fired the manager of Windows Mobile and finally fired teh manager for Windows after Longhorn was in dvelopment for 5 years and billions later with no ROI.
The problem is adoption of Windows/Office. How many here work for an employer that still uses Windows XP and Office 2003? That is lost revenue. Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Office 2007 & 2010 discourage adoption. Windows 7 is great for me and it may give some consumers to switch who are not cheap but businesses remain on XP. Even if businesses kept upgrading software before 2004 the shareholders need growth. Not selling the same old stuff.
XBOX with Microsoft entertainment was losing a billion dollars a quarter as it just could not compete with the Wii or PS3. They need a new CEO and they need to fire many people to send a message. Microsoft has a supurb R&D that these clowns refuse to utilize so they can have pissing matches. The shareholders need to vote him out as Apple and IBM their 2 past competitors are not eating them for lunch.
If I were the new CEO of Microsoft I would make Azure into the operating system it was supposed to be and make Windows 8 the final version of Windows. Again, the Windows team crippled it so they would appear more important. I would make a tablet edition of WIndows 8 and maybe come out with a few more Windows Mobile Oses to catchup. Microsoft is losing to clouds and these businesses wont upgrade their platforms of Windows/Office so a cloud is where the market needs to go next so I could suck monthly fees out of them. And of course I would fire directors and management of Windows and Office as they are ruining the company to send a powerful message to change or get out.
http://saveie6.com/
"Microsoft shares shot up 0.87 percent in after-hours trading, the most of any Dow Jones industrial average component."
then at the bottom
"Shares of Microsoft edged up 0.87 percent to $24.40 in afterhours trade from a regular-session close of $24.19."
Did it edge or shoot?
Whatever you may think of him, Einhorn has a reason to provide that impetus at Microsoft. He's losing money on his Microsoft investment, which makes him and his hedge fund look bad. When his hedge fund performs poorly compared to others, investors take out their money and invest it somewhere else. So Einhorn's complaint is strongly in his own self-interest, since he is unlikely to concede that he made a bad decision to invest in Microsoft. The question is whether other institutional (large and influential) investors will support him. If so, then they can put more financial pressure on the Microsoft Board, and hold down the Microsoft stock price.
Einhorn vs. Ballmer, it's a SMACKDOWN!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Chairs that he throws are the current state of the ART. There are very few CEOs that can throw chairs the way he does.
Bing!
Ballmer runs the company in a very conventional manner; everything is a widget. That's the problem. Apple sells a lifestyle, and one that people want, so their products, which are very good to begin with, do extremely well with the excellent marketing. Microsoft has not yet figured it out yet. The best they can do is copy what's already successful, but by the time they figure out how to get it to market, its too late, the market's gone. I don't know the Zune, but I can't believe its as bad as its sales indicate. Design may be a factor, but Microsoft hasn't given the market a good reason to buy it. At best, its viewed as another iPod, just from Microsoft.
Hang on, Gates DIDNT write windows code or do that much.
He just had a large percentage of stock that just happened to make huge gains, thanks to lots of pension funds buying the shares as a safe long term investment (like enron oil shares).
Doing nothing is hardly 'skillful' , just lucky.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Maybe it's time for MSFT to pay regular dividend. There's only so much growth possible given their size and they generate plenty of cash from Windows and Office. What's the saying from Buffet; "grow the company or give the money back to investors."
His CHAIR is on the BLOCK. God can't you guys get anything right.
The damage to Microsoft that Ballmer has done is already too systemic within Microsoft. All Ballmer did was continue the marginally illegal business practices of his predecessor, leveraging a monopoly to force people to use new Microsoft products. That would have worked, had the Internet not appeared on the scene. Missing the growth and reach of the Internet was such an embarrassment for Gates that he had to save face by retiring, and he dumped Microsoft's problems into someone else's lap. Unfortunately, that other person was "no new ideas" Ballmer.
This guy Einhorn just invested over $200 million (yes, that's with an M) in the NY Mets whose biggest claim to fame is jeering the Yankees while having won only 2 pennants as compared to the Yanks 27. Should Ballmer really listen to him?
Tell me what you'd buy with $56 billion that you couldn't buy with $8.3 billion?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I met Gates a long time ago. spoke to him a bit. one thing I know he wanted to bring to the masses was the electronic pocket wallet. I can imagine how bad he must feel watching google be the first out of the gate with something that might work. there is still time for microsoft to come out a better follow-up. but maybe not. i imagine gate's feels pretty bad about this. he did have vision. he did ignore corporate asswhipe IBM (in os/2 days). he is in general a good guy, overrun by apple bean counters and used car salsemen. i'm sorry his company has become insignificant. its got a few years left, but it is in 'survive as long as you can mode' not an industry leader anymore.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
An investor who put $100,000 into Microsoft stock 10 years ago would now have about $69,000 worth.
Interesting. Anyone else feel like stocks are just glorified gambling? (Hint: the house always wins in the long run. Where do you think the now-missing $31k went?)
Umm.. Microsoft already pays regular dividends.. what century are you living again?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Or does everyone want to jump on the idea of removing Ballmer because it's a fucking fantastic idea that people have wanted for a long-ass time?
somebody with brains & imagination needs to step up to the plate and kick Apple's ass for a change...
Google are already doing so with Android.
Tell me, how exactly is Google kicking Apple's ass with Android, when Apple's iPhone business by itself generates more revenue than Google's entire enterprise ? In market share? Like Apple gives a damn when they're vacuuming up 55% of the total profits for the entire mobile industry, not just the smartphone segment.
Companies must be lining up begging Google to kick their asses like that.
HOLY SHIT! Somebody just time travelled from 2002, before Microsoft started paying quarterly dividends!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
A CEO's job is to create shareholder wealth, not his own. In fact, Jobs pays himself $1/year.
As an AAPL shareholder for the last 20 years, I'm really happy I didn't have MSFT instead. MSFT had its growth period (largely due to monopoly, not innovation), then died for 11 years. AAPL continues to grow like 95% YoY.
Besides, what's the *second* company Gates founded that was wildly successful (Pixar has had like 15 straight hits)? And when did Gates return to a dying company and make it the best company in America? When did he do that?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
And the act of "holding it wrong" is different from the act of "holding it right".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Work out why you have 90%+ desktop marketshare instead of turning your back on it to chase the remaining 10%.
Might it be because they are the only operating system offered by the world's major OEM's? And they did it by less than legitimate means...get your hands on a vendor's agreement between MS and Dell and get back with me.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
Its a bit harsh to kill him, isn't it?
Ballmer, now I call him, I used to call him SteveB, but he ignored my input after I started challenging him both in the company and outside the company. The guy just doesn't get it. He is listening to idiots within his comfort zone and not those of us who were mavericks in the company that led the company to greatness from 1990 to 1997 with great return on investment, great partnerships with vendors, and great return on intellectual property.
Steve, I asked you to leave in 2000, 2005, 2009, 2010 and you still are not getting it. Get out and retire and stop killing the greatest software company in the world.
Bill & Melinda, get a grip. you put the wrong person in charge. he was great at company meetings and some of the 1985 to 1995 era, but he is passe. Way passe.
- humbly. I'm tired of Microsoft management. the engineers need a break from the non-engineering bureaucrats. ps. 9 of 10 top officials in china are engineers. Steve, are you? buh bye!
Is this Ballmer?
It's the ugliness men, Mr. Ballmer
We're just trying to bug you
We thought that our dreadfulness
Might be a thing to annoy you with"
But Mr. Ballmer says, "I don't mind
The thing that bothers me is
Someone keeps moving my chair"
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.