Why Ballmer Should Leave Microsoft

An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the announcement of Bill Gates' departure from the top spot at Microsoft, CNN Money is carrying an article arguing that Steve Ballmer should step down as well." From the article: "Since Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000 in favor of Ballmer, the company has floundered technically and strategically. As the company's chairman, chief software architect and supposed visionary, Gates deserves blame for missing the wave of Web-based software that has propelled Google and Yahoo. But Ballmer has made gaffes of his own in his longtime role as head of the company's business side. They include an undistinguished push into business applications to compete with Oracle, financial maneuvers that have failed to stir the stock - which has slumped 16 percent so far this year - and continuing antitrust problems in the United States and Europe."

more info on the EU anti-trust case

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Indeed, the MS anti-trust case is going well for us [fsfeurope.org].

Why should he step-down???

[mincognito]

Two words:
Crazy [google.com]
lunatic [google.com]

Management so bad... Oh Really ?

[BadassJesus]

MSFT sales figures are skyrocketing..

Xbox 360 Sales figures by Peter Moore at E306
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnufsctQnpU [youtube.com]


Full 1 hour Microsoft E3 press conference (May 10th 2006)
main speech comes after the "Gears of War" showdown, its worth the wait..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnufsctQnpU [youtube.com]

Re:more info on the EU anti-trust case

[truthsearch]

There's a huge difference between regular government regulation and punishing abusers of a market. Even the smallest government will go after those who break the law.

Missed opportunities?

[joshv]

"Gates deserves blame for missing the wave of Web-based software that has propelled Google and Yahoo."

Yes, instead they concentrated on making software people actually pay good money for. Google and Yahoo have revenue based for the most part on ads. MS is not in the ad business, though I am sure they sell a few on MSN, it's not really what they are good at.

MS didn't 'miss the wave', they just continued to make their spectacularly successful products even better, and made a lot of money in the process.

I am certainly glad that the google's and the yahoo's of the world exert competitive pressure on MS, which helps it overcome its monopolistic inertial. But this impetus is best directed towards adopting and innovating in its core business however. Leave search to google, but if Google Office has some interesting ideas, by all means, MS should use them, improve on them, and hopefully come up with innovative new ideas in an effort to best Google.

Heh...

[Vorondil28]

Why Jobs should take the helm at Microsoft
Now that would be a story...

I'm not sure I'd call one of Dvorak's columns a story as much as a meaningless pile of steaming crap.

Re:Missed opportunities?

[saddino]

MS is not in the ad business

LOL. Of [msn.com] course [adweek.com] they [microsoft.com] are [msn.com].

Steve Ballmer != Paul Allen

[cyberformer]

Enderle appears to be ignorant of Microsoft history, despite his claimed 20-year record. The other Microsoft founder left many years ago (long before Gates).

Ballmer was just an employee. Gates supposedly promoted him because he was buying stock while other insiders were selling it, demonstrating his faith in the company (and making him very rich, as this was back when MS was much smaller).

Re:16% loss

[GaratNW]

Most, or possibly every quarter Microsoft has ever posted has shown small to large year to year earnings growth. A stock price going down has little to do with reality, and far more to do with what, as someone already mentioned, analysts say and how whacked out on oxycontin the day traders that day are. Microsoft stock has seen a 16% decline this year, almost ALL of that since the last quarterly reports, because Ballmer told them that Microsoft was going to spend a lot more money over the next 8 quarters (I think it was) investing in new technologies and in a huge marketing push for Vista. Microsoft is hardly going in the wrong direction. It just doesn't happen to be a direction that has Wall Street fawning over them at the moment. The main thing Microsoft hasn't done that has pissed off Wall Street in recent years is not raise their dividend to what would, ultimately, be an unsustainable level, and instead, has grown it very conservatively, so that when they do increase it, they can maintain it. That's just smart business. But it doesn't make your average "Where's the money" investor happy.

Re:The heir apparent.

[drinkypoo]

The difference is that Microsoft products are insanely cheap. Oh wait, that's not a difference. Regardless, go out and price some "enterprise" software sometime. Call up IBM, HP, Sun, and Oracle. Then go back and look at Microsoft's pricing again and tell me that it's expensive... Then again, there's a separate question of whether it's even worth that much.

Actually THIS is why Ballmer should step down

[lostlyre]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE&search= ballmer [youtube.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvbWLfr-Z4s&search= ballmer [youtube.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj3FOHc-fgA&search= ballmer [youtube.com]

I believe this to be irrefutable evidence that he is a nutjob. It also passes scientific community standards because his behavior is both predictable and subsequent experiments are repeatable. That behavior is nutjobby.

Re:Maybe they are not mistakes

[tbmcmullen]

Nah. You're wrong. I'm not sure where you get these ideas, but they aren't based in fact. Lets see...

.Net isn't that hot

Have you -tried- to get a programming job lately without having .Net experience? Okay, maybe thats not completely true, but in my chosen field of programming (web dev) it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a job that doesn't require .Net experience. I'm sure others in the field can vouch for that as well.

Nothing special is going on with Office

How much special stuff do you expect to go on with an office suite? They're obviously making a feeble attempt at it with this ribbonb nonsense and all, and their "open" xml format. But seriously, an office suite is an office suite is an office suite. I'd like to see you innovate on that.

SQL server doesn't seem like anything special compared to oracle or even MySQL

I use MySQL for a lot of projects, however, I'll be the first to point out that it doesn't have -nearly- the features that MS SQL does. MySQL has improved lately, but if you look back at version 4... Compare that to what was available from MS SQL at the time, and you'll see my point.