Does Ballmer Need To Go? 568
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."
Re:Gone in 60 seconds? (Score:3, Informative)
Bill might not be much better (Score:1, Informative)
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?).
Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Informative)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c= [yahoo.com]
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.
Re:Will save on M$ office furniture bill (Score:5, Informative)
However, it seems to me that the writing is on the wall: cheaper computer hardware means cheaper software. $200 PCs are a bad sign for Microsoft. Android built on Linux for cell phones is a bad sign for Windows Mobile. Losses in Xbox and other non-core divisions don't help, and defocus Microsoft from it's primary mission: Windows. I'm a big fan of Intel's Atom processor, and I suspect Intel can make the transition to cheaper computing, although with lower revenue. Microsoft... I'm not so sure.
Re:Yes, but he won't (Score:5, Informative)
Not true: Check the holdings:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT [yahoo.com]
% Held by Insiders1: 13.42%
% Held by Institutions1:62.70%
If the institutions (banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, etc) want Steve out the door, he's gone.
Re:Bill Gates' confidence, not the BoD (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/proxy2007.mspx [microsoft.com]
he is still the largest individual stock holder at 9%.
Re:See that peak? Thats when I left... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Vista (Score:5, Informative)
Operating System contribution to total:
1. Windows 91.86%
2. Macintosh 7.12%
3. Linux 0.69%
4. iPhone 0.13%
Versions of Windows:
1. XP 80.44%
2. Vista 14.65%
3. 2000 3.31%
4. Server 2003 0.80%
5. 98 0.68%
Re:Borg Icon (Score:2, Informative)
There, I've taken the liberty of fixing up this paragraph for you.
Seriously, I don't know what Microsoft/Gates history you've read, but MSFT has been a festering pit since its inception. I'd recommend "Undocumented DOS" by Andrew Schulman for a look at what went on in the DOS 6/Win 3.x days, but it's such an old and now irrelevant book, chances of finding it are slim.
Inflation? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:why? (Score:3, Informative)
And remember it's jabber based, so they can syndicate with other parties, i believe livejournal supports jabber, not sure if any other significant sites do, but theres plenty of smaller jabber servers too.
Then there is still AOL, who's messaging service is much bigger than msn/yahoo in some markets.
What i dislike about yahoo/msn im protocols tho, is that they were late to the party, and yet still chose to create a proprietary protocol despite a standard one existing. AOL created their own when there was no alternative, which isn't quite so bad tho they could have opened it up more/sooner.
Re:Borg Icon (Score:3, Informative)
In contrast during these times we could use DR DOS, WP 5.1, Lotus 123, have 1000 printer drivers, take the crap these companies gave us, leave PC level development beyond small developers because of device support for the 1000 printers and displays...
Windows 3.x was the 'good guy' at one point, but somehow this time period is smeared with revisionism.
If this was 1991 again, 99% of the people here would still pick Windows 3.x.
People forget Wordperfect use to cost $600 just for a DOS based non-WYSIWYG wordprocessor, and every printer company had to have a driver for every piece of software on your computer. Let alone any other advance devices.
Everyone here also seems to forget that Novell ruled the PC networking world, and Novell's server pricing was almost 5 times the equivalent server technology today, and it was just a file and print server, virtually no application and no full scale server features.
Microsoft broke these molds, and did so in a way that was rather inexpensive for home users and small businesses to where they could for the first time afford to invest in a PC.
Just bringing a real GUI and consistent driver and development platform to the i286/i386 architecture is enough of a triumph that Microsoft should be cheered. *nix was fragmented as hell, and performed horribly on x86 at the time, especially with the low amounts of RAM users had.
These are the days of Gates putting together stuff for people without the corporate bullshit.
These are the days when you could get development tools and new development tools like VB for almost nothing, when other companies like Novell was charging $4,000 for an SDK that offered limited server side features, or even IBM and OS/2 where $2,500 was your entry level into developing applications. And this wasn't for a fancy IDE, this was the SDK documentation, and a coommand line compiler.
Microsoft broke a lot of ceilings and pricing molds, and sure it pissed these companies off, and you will note they are the first ones to run and cry and testify against Microsoft. But if these companies still had their way, you would be paying $600 for a wordprocessor that was updated every 8 years, or $3,000 for a simple file/print server. And if you were a developer, you would need money as the self or small time developer was locked out of the big boys SDKs and platform development.
Gates isn't black and white, and there is crap he did when he was younger that is questionable, and there is a period when he got his shit together and his company together. There is also the older Gates that gives away more money than the US and Europe combined (sadly), and works hard for economic policy to help poor people and provide aid to places that need it.
If you want to see Gates in more areas of grey - go find some of the summits online that Gates has been a part with regard to charity and econimic assistance. During a recent one, when idiots from the Bush administration talked about 'investment' return on the 'life' of boy or girl in Africa, Gates was livid that prices were put on the lives of people and the 'return of investment' was their consideration. Gates was versed in this mentality and had combated it before, and ripped their heads off for being so monstorous by pricing out the economics of saving lives.
He isn't stupid, tends to do the right thing when it comes to his money, and outside the IT world is highly regarded for not only the use of his money but the peronsal interest he has invested in working to save lives.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:3, Informative)
Portable devices.
Smart phones.
Game consoles.
Media centers.
The Internet (and cell-phone networks) will be the vehicle for delivery of content to these devices.
But the only thing I see driving PC sales is:
1. Social Network applications for which portable devices or media-center-type devices are insufficient. (which is a subset of people who are now buying PC's).
2. Software developers who are developing software for the above devices.
3. High-end content development and production (writers, engineers, etc.)
Yeah - I don't see a lot of volume in PC sales like I do in the portable devices market; which will, eventually, converge around cell-phones. The coolest thing about my iPhone was the ubiquitous connectivity I got - even though EDGE sucked - it sucked way worse when I cancelled AT&T, and had to deal with the fruitless hotspot-hunting.
As much as we don't like the idea, it's going to be the cell-phone providers driving this stuff. And it's going to suck in a huge way. Because as cool and attractive as the iPhone model is - there's like 10 Verizon customers for every iPhone customer. iPhone+AT&T just don't add up for *most* people. But the demand is there. People WANT mobile computing and messaging. They just don't want to deal with the crappy limitations imposed by iPhone+AT&T (no picture/video messaging, outrageous pricing, etc.) (me? I hacked my iPhone - but that's not *most* folks out there - who are buying the new blackberry and LG phones (er - getting them subsidized with a service contract) and using them on the cheaper services).