Ballmer Says Google's Growth Is 'Insane'

eldavojohn writes "Steve Ballmer spoke to the Seattle PI this week, commenting that Google's pace of employee growth is 'insane,' and the company has few successful businesses outside of Internet search and advertising. He referred to Google's non-search efforts as 'cute.' Google's current number of employees is nearly doubling each year. 'I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.' Mr. Ballmer went on complain that, in general, competition for good programmers has become an issue. Even 'hedge funds' are looking for skilled coders, making the HR fight between the two companies that much more challenging."

Let the chair throwing commence

As I translate Steve's remarks:

ROaaarrrr!!!! We are finding ourselves *hoot hoot* having to spend more money to hire quality programmers *scratch*. *Beats Chest* Google BAD!

Re:Let the chair throwing commence

Google to MS: All your coders are belong to us!!

Insane

Well, if anybody knows "insane", it's Ballmer.

Absolutely, he's the perfect nutbar

Balmer is, in my mind the perfect nutbar to be in charge of Microsoft at this point in time. While their foundation slowly erodes beneath them he sits up on top of the company and makes us laugh while still being easy to hate. He makes a fool out of himself with his stupid antics (chair tossing, monkey dancing, and ridiculous over the top hyperbole) and all the while he maintaines the "condescending asshole aura" that we've come to expect in Microsoft leadership.

Re:Insane

True.

Balmer: "I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value."

Microsoft's Arno Edlemann: "Usually Microsoft doesn't develop products, we buy products."

It's pretty clear that MS doesn't really understand what "Innovation" really is, and how to do it. In the long term, this will bite them in the ass. Continuing their abusive and illegal behavior to maintain their de facto monopoly is their only hope of long-term survival, and they know it.

Re:Let the chair throwing commence

BAAALMMMEEER.... MAAAAAAAD

Re:Meh...

Another theory states that he is angry to be the only person on earth not having received a gmail invite...

Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

AKAImBatman spoke to Slashdot this week, commenting that Microsoft's CEO is 'insane,' and the company has few successful businesses outside of Windows and Office. He referred to Balmer's stage antics as 'cute.' 'I don't really know that yelling "Developers" and doing your own thing on the stage creates value.' AKAImBatman went on complain that, in general, competition for good stage presenters has become an issue. Even companies like SCO are looking for skilled showmen, making the HR fight between the two companies that much more challenging.

Ok, joking aside, am I the only one who finds Balmer's complaint a bit hypocritical? It's true that Microsoft has incredible sums of cash. However, Windows and Office are pretty much the only things making Microsoft that cash. Nearly every other portion of the company either contributes very little to the bottom line, or actually loses Microsoft money. I imagine that's part of the reason why Microsoft keeps bundling extra software services with Windows: At least it raises the value of the software package. (In theory, anyway.)

That being said, I am going to (*gasp*) agree with him on one point. Having a bunch of programmers sitting around does not accomplish anything. They have to be in a full-on creative environment to do the truly impressive stuff. I think that the environment is slowly dissolving as Google loses it cohesion as a tight-knit company. They're growing incredibly fast, and I'm not sure they're really getting a good return on that growth. Obviously, only those inside the company can actually know that for sure, but it's not looking as good as it once did for those of us on the outside.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Normally, I'd agree. I think there's a lot to the philosophy of "do one thing, and do it very well." Google, however, does a lot of things... very well. Their maps and apps and whatever else are all clever, clean, and tasteful, not to mention highly effective. Ballmer calling them "cute" is an attempt to damn them with faint praise, which is to say, dismiss them. He can say what he likes, but Google will continue to chip away their market share.

I do agree with you that their rate of growth is not sustainable, but I also suspect that as soon as it slows, people will immediately go "Google's hiring is down! Are they in trouble? Are they just not good enough to stand up to Microsoft after all?"

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Google does do only one thing, and they do it well! That one thing just happens to manifest itself in a myriad of ways, but they're still striving for a single, massive goal.

From their about google page:

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." [google.ca]

l4h

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

"Google does do only one thing, and they do it well!"

Yes. And that one thing is sell advertisements. Just like magazines. Only instead of editorials, infographics, and stories, Google uses search and nifty Web and network enabled apps to attract eyeballs.

Google's army of coders building "cute" apps are no different than a magazine's editorial staff and contirubuting writers writing targeted content that some demographic enjoys reading. Google's coders are just building content to bring viewers to the site.

Now, Google may bring all the world's information together, but that's only because it happens to help sell advertisements. If people stopped becoming interested in information, Google would look for other ways to attract viewers. Like...er...buying YouTube...

Google's business model an excellent model for developers. Using advertising to pay for developer's projects is really a holy grail for developers. You don't have to build the perfect product or meet external specs. You just need to build something cool and have fun doing it. And, you get to share it without of the traditional software strings attached. Very cool model.

-Chris

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Yep. You hit it right on the head. Google isn't a search/data organization company. They are an advertising company. All of their products are designed to do one thing: sell advertisements. In that business model, they have found a way to compete very aggresively with other software companies because most software companies rely upon sales of software for their income. With Google's business model, they care only about selling advertisements, so they can give their software away for free. What does that mean? Nobody can beat them on a cost basis. Other companies can produce higher quality (or more feature-rich, in MSFT's case) software, but nobody can beat them on cost. Over time, Google can continue to improve their apps until they approach the quality of traditional software. What this means is that Google can chip away, and eventually eclipse, other software manufacturers in terms of quality and features, but nobody can eclipse Google on cost.

Another interesting thing about Google's model is that, compared to traditional Madison Street advertising companies, most of Google's revenues come from small to medium-sized businesses. They've levelled the playing field when it comes to buying advertising space, allowing a mom-and-pop shop to compete directly with a mega-conglomerate. What I find most interesting about this model is that I believe it to be fairly immune to business cycles. While large companies will expand and contract their advertising budgets based upon their bottom line, Google will receive relatively constant business from the mom-and-pop shops, whose advertising budget is both small and fairly constant regardless of recessions or expansions. We'll have to see how Google does through the next recession, since during the last recession they were still growing market share far faster than the economy was contracting. My bet is that Google becomes a safe haven for investors during recessions as a result.

Finally, despite Google's phenomenally high P-E ratio, Google is currently fairly well valued, at least according to Free Cash Flow models. According to my research (and please don't take my word for it, do your own research--the results I found were startling to say the least), the FCF model was the only model that was significantly better than a random walk in predicting company valuations. Google has a high P-E ratio not because it is overvalued. They have a high P-E ratio because they have fantastic (and improving!) profit margins and revenue growth. Can it continue? Well, past performance is certainly no guarantee of future performance, but based on what I perceive to be a business model with a clear and sustainable competitive advantage, and a relatively non-existant connection to recession/exapnsion, I believe they will be able to sustain strong revenue growth and stable or improving profit margins for the next 3 years at the least. Plug in those assumptions to a FCF model, and you'll find that GOOG is fairly valued, if not undervalued.

That's my 1.5 cents (inflation is a bitch).

-dan

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Now, Google may bring all the world's information together, but that's only because it happens to help sell advertisements.

The voting power in Google stock is very narrowly held, and deliberately so because the founders wanted to go public without giving effective control of the company to outside investors.

With a company thats direction is narrowly controlled by a small group, you can't assume that everything is about financial profit as much as you can with a widely held company.

One might just as well argue that Google sells ads, because that's the only way to bring in the money to bring the world's information together.

Of course, the reality probably combines both: Google's leadership is probably interested both in profit and bringing information together, and has found a way to have the two reinforce each other.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

I think Ballmer calls those things cute because they mostly don't directly bring revenue. Microsoft has always believed that everything they do should directly bring in money. I think that's one reason their online documentation has always sucked. Since Google's main revenue stream is AdWords, anything tangential, even though it indirectly brings revenue by keeping people on site and raising brand recognition, is simply cute.

Either Ballmer's an idiot or in denial. I'm feeling it's a little from column A and a little from column B.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Well, no. Only Windows and Office bring profit. But every product they make brings in millions to billions in revenue. The problem for them is not enough revenue and/or very high expenses. XBox, for example, brings in billions, but they have had to spend billions to convince (and pay) developers to write games on it and to convince the public it's worth buying.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

But even if a department in MS loses money, but serves to protect or expand their money making operations, isn't that profit driven? Using XBox to push Windows Media Center, using CE to disrupt Palm and limit that avenue of attack on Windows, giving away IE to destroy Netscape? Its too simplistic to say that all of their projects don't make money just because the revenues that MS reports don't directly credit those profits to the projects that generate or protect them.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Microsoft, they've got two monopolies( one created from the other ) which bring in over 60% of their profits and all other business ventures lose money.

Then where does the other 40% of their profits come from?

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

The issue in the past is that when any company has become sufficiently succesful in a particular IT field, Microsoft has moved in and either bought them out or thrown money at developing their own version. Any company that hopes to stand up to Microsoft has been unable to fund the fight and must either give in or go down fighting. So far.

What we're hopefully seeing here with Google is a company that can face up to and outperform Microsoft and continue to do so while Microsoft burns through money trying to put them out of business. Then end of Microsoft's ability to do whatever it wants and put down whoever it wants would be a great boon to the world of computing.

The slow uptake of XP and the potential even slower uptake of Vista only feed into the process. Truly we are living in interesting times.

Rich

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

I think there is a fundamental difference though in that for over a decade now Microsoft has been able to convince people all around the world to part with hundreds of dollars, pounds, euros, yen and whatever else for their core products (Windows and Office), and many of their other products do also make a profit. Google has yet to launch a single application that can do this.

They do make a fair amount of money through their ad system but they are yet to produce anything else which isn't running at a loss. Besides, most stock-market analysts will agree that unless Google can pull something out of their hat in the next few years, their valuation is simply insane.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

I don't know, I use the maps on local.live.com much more frequently than maps.google.com. They are also way better than google earth.

I like gmail, but it's bee 3 years since I started using it and its still "beta". I'm a bit concerned google isn't very committed to their products.

And let's face it - this isn't 1998. The google search model sucks these days, and only worked great for the first few years because no one was exploiting their pagerank methodology. I get the same crap on Microsoft's search engine I do on Google. It doesn't matter which one I use, and for the 90% of people who juse use IE's defaults, it doesn't matter to them either.

Google has been riding on their successes from nearly a decade ago. I think google is in a much more difficult place than you imagine. If anything, their hiring fanatacism is a desperate attempt to find a diamond in the pile of coal. They are hoping that of the hundreds of turkeys they hire, one will think of something big, and they will be saved.

I'd say if google doesn't come up with something real fast, like in the next 3-5 years - they will be finished.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

I'm not the parent, but I would have to say that ask's search results are better than googles these days. With all of the fraudsters targetting google, the results elsewhere have reached superiority.

If google doesn't do a serious revamp of their search algorithm, I'd expect their search share to start sliding soon.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Investors have a lot riding on the fact that Google will eventually return more than just a very high stock price for them. While stock prices make money short term, the base of investing is long term returns. I have a feeling that, in a few years' time, if Google isn't returning anything, their stock could face a major drop.

Something that is scary, though, is that Google has a very unique position in the marketplace. They know trends before they are public trends. With their stats program that is popular with startups, they can see new sites and new ideas before they get big. That is tremendous power, in both terms of capital (buying out early), and could be used for good of "evil" very easily. Imagine if they started selling that data to investment groups. "Based on search queries it looks like MSFT might face a major wave of backlash, you should short their stock." They are in position to even influence the global market through Google News and search results ranking.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Oh, Balmer's complaint is hugely hypocritical. Google also has huge sums of cash from their stock.

Exactly. When was the last time Microsoft's stock was over $100, let alone $400? Ballmer's more envious than anything -- he keeps wondering why no one at Google is reading the résumés he keeps sending.

Google will eventually hit a wall if they don't come up with other big revenue streams. And I think that's why they hire so many smart people. Even if only one in a thousand comes up with a great idea it'll all pay off.

I don't think so. I think they're pushing the wall further and further, making things less profitable for their competitors. The extra ideas they come up with, good or not, aren't hedges against a collapse but part of a strategy to quietly worm their way into every part of the Internet. Face it: Google the search engine is near ubiquitous now. If they come up with other things (mobile phones, operating systems, etc.) that attain that kind of ubiquity, eventually they'll be able to charge for them and people won't give it a second though, since they will have become dependent on them.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

When was the last time Microsoft's stock was over $100, let alone $400? Ballmer's more envious than anything -- he keeps wondering why no one at Google is reading the résumés he keeps sending.

No offense, but don't start investing.

A companies value is NOT reflected by the share price alone. It's the share price TIMES the number of outstanding shares.

Quick math:

Googles market cap is 137.43 billion; share price is 441.96; it has approximately 311 million shares circulating.

Microsofts market cap is 267.23 billion; share price is 27.31; it has appromately 9.7 billion shares circulating.

It's been argued that one of the main reasons that Google trades at such a high P/E ratio is because they've restricted the number of shares circulating... Like, if they split the stock to match the shares outstanding of other companies, there'd be so many shares circulating that the price would drop, not only just because there'd be more shares as a result of the splits, but because there would actually enough to fill the demand.

Not trully related to the discussion, but related to your comment...

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

I've often wondered why MSFT see Google as a threat, MSFT make office software and Operating systems. Google dont make OS's (well not yet) and sure Google have a web app that can read office docs, which is really more for convenience, so at least until recently the two companies have been after completely different things.

The problem for Microsoft is two-fold. Everything Microsoft does ties in to their core business. And that core business is under constant threat.

Everything Microsoft does points back to their OS. And in turn, their OS is the platform on which they build everything they do. The concept of lock-in is not only about immediate profit, but it also ensures that they have a clear path ahead of them. Its easier to see and plan for the future if you control the present. Anything that does not feed the need for a Microsoft OS stack is a threat to this strategy.

Why would Microsoft worry about losing control? Ask IBM what its like. Consider a time where IBM seized the microcomputer market - a time where "IBM PC" was a product reference and not a place-holder for a box produced by one of several thousand possible vendors with an unknown combination of commodity components. IBM is still a power-house in the Industry. But they no longer control it. It's hard to not only make money in a commodity market, but it's also hard to control one. And when you don't have that control, it is difficult to determine what directions such a market is going to take. What happened to hardware may very well come to pass for the OS as well.

Re:Slasdotters Say Ballmer Is 'Insane'

Remember this is MS. Everything is reverse in MS world. i.e. They are innovating when they copy other companies. The Apple phone doesn't offer any new features. Linux is full of their IP. And it goes on and on.

I imagine that's part of the reason why Microsoft keeps bundling extra software services with Windows: At least it raises the value of the software package. (In theory, anyway.)

Well some of their divisions really do nothing for Windows. Like the Xbox. Its a huge money loser. It doesn't add to Windows or Office. Xbox is about taking the market from Sony and Nintendo. Period. When other companies lose $4 billion on a division or product over several years, the product gets cancelled or overhauled. What I mean by overhaul is in the strategy. MS did neither. It just followed the same strategy and upgraded the hardware and software specifications for the Xbox 360.

Having a bunch of programmers sitting around does not accomplish anything.

Yes but even if they are working, are they actually producing anything worthwhile? MS spends about $1 billion a quarter in R&D. Over the last five years, all they've managed to do is to produce an OS that in my opinion, a woeful copy of OS X. It's not that they don't have good people and that their people don't work. It's that the direction of the company is lacking.

To me, Microsoft's problem is that their main goal it to compete with anyone who might threaten their monopoly. Their goal is not to make a good product but to beat everyone else. IE was only innovative up until Netscape lost. Then development stagnated until Firefox became a threat. MSN Search was just an ordinary search engine. Then Google showed up. MSN Search was overhauled to compete. Apple conquered the MP3 player market. MS now wants a piece of that market.

What happened to . . .

. . . the "monkeyboy" tag?

Jealous much?

Steve, your showing off your true traits and motivations again.

If you really felt this way, you'd sit back and wait for Google to implode, and then hire all the best ex-google-ites for well under what they're being paid now.

But you're making such a fuss about it...whining really.

Steve here's a hint for you, it's called competition. Look it up some time.

Re:Jealous much?

While I am no fan of Steve Ballmer I have to agree that he may be right or at least right enough that I would choose not to invest in Google, good company though it may be, at the current share prices, especially considering the relatively meager stream of advertising income compared to the massive inflow of investor monies.

Why? What's wrong with their business model, why would it fail?

Nothing, but there is such a thing as an overvalued share price and Google is the textbook example. There are other shares that are worth even more than Google, Berkshire Hathaway comes to mind, but those companies tend to generate a lot of actual real cash value each year. If one discounts the advertising revenue, which is by all accounts meager compared with the current share prices, then it becomes extremely difficult to estimate how much the remaining value, including intellectual property, human capital, and experience may eventually be worth. It is not *zero* to be sure, but exactly how much and when? The answer to that question determines how much you are willing to pay for a share and how much you ultimately earn in that investment depends upon how accurate your initial estimation was. In the meantime your $400+ dollars per share are NOT earning money doing something else. It is a substantial risk and one that not every investor is necessarily willing to take. On, the other hand, "there is a sucker born every minute," or so the saying goes.

Their revenues are increasing, and search-related advertising is hardly going to disappear -- never mind their expansion into other types of advertising.

Yes, but see above for why this does not necessarily a good investment make...

As for rate of growth, define growth. You mean rate of employee growth? Sure, exponential growth is unsustainable. But with gross profits over 6 Bn on revenue over 10 Bn, I think they've got pockets deep enough to continue to hire freely -- never mind the cash reserves of 11 Bn.

I think that he meant employee growth, but even employee growth must be justified in terms of additional value created for the business. It does not matter if the company has a bankroll of $10 x 10^4 or $10 x 10^7 dollars. If the business cannot earn at least $1 plus prime interest rate or 10 year treasury rate (4.45% currently) then that dollar should be returned to the shareholders in dividends after all of the expenses have been paid. Reinvestment is not always a good idea, it depends upon the current economic climate and the potential returns. The fact that Google has 11 Bn cash reserves is immaterial to this point.

Think about it. If they pay $200,000 annually (incl benefits) for good employees, they can still hire 30,000 of those people while still turning a gross profit.

The company is generating money based upon advertising revenue and EXPECTED future revenues in the form of inflow of investor money, but this does not necessarily mean that each employee is generating a gross profit by their direct efforts.

Assuming, of course, that their revenues don't drop off, which would run counter to almost every analyst's predictions.

If you are an investor in Google right now, especially if you didn't get in real early (and who but the insiders did?), you had better hope that not only does revenue NOT drop off, but that growth doesn't slow either because you are going to need some pretty powerful revenue growth to come out ahead at $400+ per share on P/E ratio of 40+.

Hedge funds

It is true. I took a job with an automated trading firm over Google. Partly I wanted to work for a smaller company. Google's dream 20% time looked like a myth when I actually interviewed there (none of my interviewers used their time because they had too much work to do on their normal projects). Also, there's something satisfying about directly measuring the success of your software in dollars. If it makes money, you run it.

Next week news:

Novell agrees that google's growth is insane.

Are you kidding me?

The CEO of the largest software company in the world is Whining about some other Co's hiring rates?

I wonder if this is more telling about a potential waning of MicroSoft than anything else. Or is it that Balmer is still trying to step out of a shadow... Gates has had a number of exceptional sound bytes over the years.... Positive ones. Balmer, not so much.

This article can be summed up in one word....

.... Jealousy

Google is insane?

This is coming from the guy who ran around a stage [google.com] screaming and flapping his arms about.

Re:Google is insane?

That video is hosted on a Google site... that must be some kind of irony?

He may have a point

Throwing more resources at a problem isn't always the best way to solve it. For crying out loud, if anyone should know that it's Ballmer.

A business I worked at several years ago did the same thing. Grew too fast and outpaced the market. Wound up running out of cash and having to lay off all those new hires. One guy was an employee for two weeks. I helped interview the guy, too.

Microsoft jokes aside,

Ballmer is completely correct.

Disclaimer: I worked for Microsoft

Google's approach to growth right now resembles something like a gold rush, assuming that they know where the gold really is. I dont think they do exactly, but are hedging their bets on a number of ideas. The search engine makes money, but Google knows that they will need to do more, and I hope the phone rumors are true, but even so, just gathering a lot of great programmers together under one unbrella does not guarantee innovation.

I think Microsoft proved that good programmers dont necessarily make great programs. Every one of Google's businesses are cases of doing someone else's idea better. Cant wait to see what is coming, but for the moment, I cant see the fault in Ballmer's logic.

Re:Microsoft jokes aside,

So it's about doing someone else's ideas, but better?

To me, that sounds a *hell* of a lot better than doing someone else's ideas, but poorly, but having enough money and tenacity to wait out your failing competition.

Maybe that's just me, though.

Re:Microsoft jokes aside,

That's what "innovation" is. Taking someone else's idea, improving on it and making it useful. Coming up with your own ideas is called invention.

Re:Microsoft jokes aside,

From Wikipedia:

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44.28 billion and 76,000 employees in 102 countries.

Google Inc. had 10,674 full-time employees as of December 31, 2006, Revenue $10.604 Billion USD (2006)

Which company looks more bloated?

Re:Google looks more bloated

I didn't say market cap. I stated revenue. WRT revenue, it's irrelevant how quickly it's reached as