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."
why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Raise time (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
over stating things a bit (Score:4, Insightful)
The Yahoo bid didn't really fail as such (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Yahoo will not factor in. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Three words (Score:3, Insightful)
Claiming that the board is angry and looking to oust the CEO is just beyond ridiculous though. MS has always done an amazing job from a financial point of view. They post record profits and revenues every single year. Their profits for the past year (yes the Vista year) were double what they were 3 years ago. Even though the past year they grew more slowly than usual they still posted over 10% growth in earnings. Those kinds of numbers are much better than you will see from 90% of other companies out there.
If you were in charge of a group of people who had consistently outperformed most of their peers for decades would you fire them all?
No no no! (Score:4, Insightful)
Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyways, Vista may be "the 2nd most used OS in the world for desktop PC's", but how bout we compare its lifespan to ANY other OS release. I would still be using Windows 2000 if there werent a few select applications(mainly games) that I cant trick into running on it. I know there are several others out there who are the same.
People buy into the bullshit marketing. Its not that the product has merit, its that they are foolish enough to believe the promises made. How many millions of people buy those weight loss supplements, or male enhancement supplements? Because there are lots of people using something doesn't mean its a quality product.
i hate balmer (Score:3, Insightful)
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
I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:He's Google obsessed (Score:5, Insightful)
Its unfortunate. The last thing the world needs is a company with a monopoly on internet search, any company. And that includes google.
Re:Yahoo will not factor in. (Score:1, Insightful)
But it is of significance to Ballmer's personal self-esteem: seems like he didn't want to look like he was a bad negotiator. So, financially he should have made the deal (according to his own arguments), but didn't in order to save face. That's bad business.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Concerning the Yahoo deal (Score:3, Insightful)
As it is, Ballmer will still have to decide on whether to allow / discontinue XP Retail and XP - OEM after June 30. Given that Dell, HP and IBM are pi**ing in their pants about the prospect, and finding ways to still offer XP - it shows clearly that even the biggest OEMs are afraid of losing marketshare to companies like Asus and Apple.
And finally, if at all Microsoft decide to drop Ballmer; I have a very important piece of advice. PLEASE LET THE CHAIR-MAN TAKE HIS CHAIR WHEN HE LEAVES.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Insightful)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c= [yahoo.com]
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EIXK&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c= [yahoo.com]
Does that look familiar? (The "Interactive" option allows you to put MSFT on the same chart.)
Doesn't anyone remember the Dot-com bubble [wikipedia.org] and all those new clueless investors overvaluing any tech company that looked somewhat successful? Note that MSFT's P/E ratio is currently at a somewhat sane 16.9.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Insightful)
[... pretty much everything that microsoft did for eight years which, for microsoft, was a bad move...]
Yeah, but how is this bad for anyone else but Microsoft Corp? I say keep Ballmer and watch everybody else grow!Re:Yahoo will not factor in. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He's Google obsessed (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of online advertising, they may end up being a problem. All those ad words customers they generated ended up being very attractive to 3rd parties. Google will pay to put their customers ads up on your site, same basic market model as someone like doubleclick. It is here that a monopoly will end up costing consumers, given the proper board and CEO of Google. They have neither a monopoly there, nor the apparent corporate culture necessary to make this a problem. Yet.
This revenue is what Microsoft is interested in. In order to get there, Microsoft needs a functioning web site with an astronomical amount of users, to attract advertisers. Then they can take that customer base and start sharing it with 3rd parties, which attracts more customers. From what I understand, Yahoo has far better advertisement position than "Live" does. Combined with Yahoo, Microsoft would be in a position to make an advertisement company that could ultimately rival Google, doubleclick, etc. They failed because ultimately Yahoo's internal culture is against Microsoft. From what I can see, it's to the point that employees would have left the company in numbers significant enough that Yahoo would have ended up worthless. This is something the guys at MS didn't see happening. They assumed the amount of cash offered and the overall chance to rival Google in both search engine and advertisements would have been good enough for both management and employees. It clearly wasn't and now Microsoft understands that, which is why they recalled their bid and aren't chasing the hostile take over option.
scapegoat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Insightful)
The 1990s was the end of the era of PC adoption. I started work in the early 80's, which with the introduction of the microcomputer was the star of that era. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, we never bought computers onesies and twosies, we bought them literally by the truckload to computer-up entire departments at a time. It's been widely observed that while Microsoft was strongly against "software piracy" ideologically, it benefited from a certain level of "piracy" through economic network effects. Worrying about "piracy" was like worrying about the little fish that slipped through the holes in your net, whilst your net was completely full of big fish.
Microsoft was a company that was predicated on exponential growth in demand for its products. In the 80s through mid 90s it was driven by PC adoption, but the thoughtful among us always believed that was not sustainable. In the mid to late 90s the era of exponential adoption was extended for a few years by the dot com bubble.
Where are the exponential growth drivers of the twenty-first century? Well, there aren't any like the 80s-90s, but to the degree they exist they are in consumer markets. Microsoft had never been a consumer company. It never had consumer loyalty. It was a company that sold things to people who make purchase decisions on the behalf of others.
Microsoft's XBox and Zune efforts were, in the culture of Microsoft, bold and appropriate steps. Microsoft has for most of its existence been defined by dramatic, market beating growth. That is not in the cards in its PC software business. So it "had to" go where the growth was. They are strategic products. XBox is the more successful of the two, but arguably Zune is the more strategically important, because it is an attempt by Microsoft to leverage its PC monopoly into becoming a pinch point for digital entertainment providers.
It has a formula for digital entertainment, and it's the good old one that's worked so often for them before: appeal to people who make decisions on the behalf of consumers. In this case it's all about DRM. DRM isn't just an ideological choice, it's a strategic choice for Microsoft. What they offer is control of the platform. They offer some of that control to content oriented companies so those companies can extract more revenue from their customers. Consumers go with Microsoft because they can't get the content they want anywhere else. Like a many strategies, it's reasonable on paper, but real world considerations make it a lot harder than it sounds. Microsoft has to deal with a competitor with lots of vision for the future (Apple) and partners with no vision for the future other than to delay its coming as long as possible (the entertainment industry).
Without taking anything away from Bill Gates brilliance as a businessman, Ballmer had it a lot harder than Gates ever had. Bringing back Gates might improve discipline, or it might not. The company is inherently less focused than it was a decade ago.
What Microsoft really needs is new blood.
There are two choices: either it makes a serious bid to become a dominant player in consumer technology, or it becomes more conservative in how it throws money at grand strategies.
They're both reasonable options. I once heard an investment adviser say he had Procter and Gamble in his portfolio because if people stopped buying soap, most of his other assumptions about the world would probably be wrong as well. A company like P&G is continually creating new products, but nobody expects them to double their size every five years. You manage a company like that to produce profit, and growth is a welcome side effect. For years Microsoft ran things the opposite way: aim for growth and profits will come.
The right leader will take them one or the other path, although he'll face a lot of doubters, because neither of those choices is how Microsoft got where it is today. But bringing back Gates won't turn back the clock twenty years.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:3, Insightful)
Gates was simply smart enough to leave at the high point, so he'll be remembered for the good (for MS) things he did. He bailed out before the crap he did started biting him in the behind. He probably told Balmer in a closed-door meeting that his job would be to take the shit straight in the face without flinching, and that he'd get $$$ for it.
Re:Don't need Yahoo for a reason to can him. (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, it took IE 3 major revisions before it became the dominant browser for example. It took IIS 6 major revisions to become a serious contender to Apache.
I don't think it'll be that easy on the two failing business areas I mentioned above to become dominant (or even perhaps prevalent), but Microsoft have a habit of hammering away until successful one way or another. It'll be an interesting battle that's for sure.
Re:why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He's Google obsessed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo can spend months trying to make Yahoo Mail beta compatible with one of the fastest moving browser targets on planet, Safari (and Webkit). Same goes for My Yahoo beta which can easily be called a full feature RSS reader APPLICATION running from web browser.
Google guys do everything to keep compatibility with Safari/Firefox and even as a user, I know Safari isn't the easiest browser to code for.
What does Hotmail do? It suggests user to "UPGRADE IE version" to get better experience. Problem? It is/was Safari 3.1 for God's sake.
If they want success on Web, they should fire the first person to suggest IE for better experience, adopt the "Graded browser support" scheme of Yahoo, stop advertising joke like things like Silverlight OR make Silverlight 2 something that people will show Adobe as an example. For example, Silverlight 64bit edition for Linux/FreeBSD , actual MS release without using any puppets.
As you mention Google Android, you know Android syntax is based on J2ME since it is the most known, distributed, multiplatform thing on mobile space. Did MSN code ANYTHING for hundreds of millions of mobile devices having J2ME? Symbian? No. Why? Because they see every device not running Win CE as some sort of "enemy".
On the other hand, Yahoo Go is a full feature application written in J2ME, Youtube (Google) ships an excellent performing J2ME application to mobile devices.
It is not only Ballmer to be fired. It is those idiots at MSN who once dared to block standard WAP browsers except their MS WAP browser (old Sony GSM) from mobile hotmail. As far as I can see, that group of idiots are still active at MS.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:4, Insightful)
If MSFT keeps on buying up companies without making any real products the day windows or office becomes obsolete(IE ODF everywhere) is the day MSFT crashes hard. It will get torn to shreds by investors, leaving nothing left.
It will be spectacular.
MSFT can survive it if and only if they can get more than a handful of products that actually make money.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Insightful)
The shoe fits... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that supposed to be a good thing? After all, you have to pay them. And looking it against your other figures, you get that, by more than doubling the people, you just double the revenue and not even double the income. So the income generated per person has in fact diminished.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Concerning the Yahoo deal (Score:5, Insightful)
You got all these anti-Microsoft zealots so eager to bash and say things about Ballmer and anything at Microsoft even when they do not have any idea of what they are talking about.
Meanwhile, Steve Ballmer played a very good hand, knowing that Jerry was bluffing. It is funny to read those comments showing the "proofs" of how Microsoft is doing so bad, how its stock is going down and how they are at the edge of a disastrous crisis.
If we talk about "reality distortion fields", a lot of guys (the majority?) of people frequently commenting on slashdot are really affected by the anti-Microsoft zealotry. They really should get out of their basements... they would be surprised.
As the article you point says, Ballmer played a really clever hand. At the end, Microsoft did know that the stockholders would very gladly accept their offer.
As it can be seen in the article pointed by parent post and other business related articles, Yahoo! major stockholders are not basement-nerds or bearded-Free software-zealots. They are the one of the most successful asset management firms who do not care about the religious wars but only about how much is the stock. And the reality is that the offer made by Microsoft was a good one.
Now, after Ballmer drop the offer, the reaction was a lowering of Yahoo!'s stock price. And, as it is said, ultimately it will result in a better bang for the buck for Microsoft.
If there is any CEO who may be thrown out, it is not Steve, but Jerry.
Re:Losing the consumer market (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't use Vista, and the one time I tried it it did manage to piss me off. That said, my money is on me adopting some later and stable version of Vista.
Re:Raise time (Score:2, Insightful)
None of Microsoft stockholders would blame Ballmer for anything, what he did (publicly retracting the offer) was just another part of the plan to acquire Yahoo. Have you seen the stock price of Yahoo! after the announcement? gone from $28 to $23.
After Yahoo! stock holders (some of them quite famous [allthingsd.com]) grill and dispose of Jerry Yang, they will put another CEO who is willing to cooperate with Microsoft. Of course this time, the price per stock will be lower than he initial offering.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:1, Insightful)
(&, I was WAITING for a "Pro-*NIX" person here to say what you have: Ballmer = OpenSource & *NIX variants' best pal, in that he's SCREWING MICROSOFT UP, bigtime!)
I mean, what is this? Is S. Ballmer a "long-term plant/sleeper agent" put in place, by OpenSource champion Richard Stallman or something, @ Microsoft to destroy them? It surely seems it, as his trackrecord is NOT good!
Get rid of Ballmer!
S. Ballmer is NOT a technologist @ heart & more of a salesman!
You replace him w/ someone like "King Billy" who IS a "techie/nerd/geek" @ heart (as well as a heck of a businessman also) & you set MS right again... MS did great under "King Billy" (as I call him, not out of ribbing, but respect actually), & there is little questioning that much.
(S. Ballmer's trackrecord of failures on various projects (mostly VISTA) proof that putting a "greedy marketing type" @ the helm of a technology based company is BAD NEWS on all fronts)
Again - (& I cannot stress this enough) The proof's in the failures under S. Ballmer's tenure as the head of MS, & there's little disputing those... whereas, by way of comparison, under a "True Geek" like Mr. Gates (or, Jim Alchin), you had MS ruling the planet (they still do, but for how long under Ballmer?)...
Re:Gates should drop Vista *AND* Ballmer (Score:3, Insightful)
Asus (EEE PC), Ubuntu and Apple have taken significant desktop market shares away from Microsoft.
No, they have not.
I challenge you to find even the slightest bit of evidence to demonstrate otherwise.
(Apple might just barely qualify for taking away a small part of Microsoft's desktop market share. The other two wouldn't even qualify as rounding errors.)
Re:Don't need Yahoo for a reason to can him. (Score:3, Insightful)
your sig (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why? (Score:3, Insightful)
How long will it be before Google are in a position to do a hostile takeover of MS and kick their shit into shape?
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yahoo will not factor in. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, Ballmer can wait and hope Yahoo comes back and takes a lower offer. But meanwhile Google continues to press its advantage, and Yahoo has a chance at either (1) making changes that make it unattractive to Microsoft, or (2) hitting on something successful and raising its value significantly. So a later deal is very risky, and if Ballmer is betting on that, he's being foolish.
The only advantage to waiting is the 'eating popcorn while Yahoo shareholders sue' bit, i.e., to gloat. That might be fun from a personal perspective, but it's bad for business.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:1, Insightful)
Some things can't be avoided. I don't think having someone besides Ballmer would have mattered. Same idea behind Clinton; he just got lucky to be in office at a time when everybody gained access to computers and efficiency went through the roof.
Re:i hate balmer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Google sells stock and ads.
Microsoft has actual products (bitch all you want about them - they do sell).
And there is no way in hell Billy Boy would ever let Google (or anyone else for that matter) buy out his company.
Re:Concerning the Yahoo deal (Score:2, Insightful)
This place is just turning into one big circle jerk.
Re:See that peak? Thats when I left... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't Like Ballmer, But He's Winning... (Score:4, Insightful)
But we knew that already. That's why we don't make good CEO's, and often not even good managers.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they're "investments that haven't paid off." Period. Full stop. And that's plenty of evidence that Ballmer's doing a bad job. In contrast, you have absolutely zero evidence for that "yet!"
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:4, Insightful)
Why yes, monopolies have different legal restraints than other companies, and when said monopoly breaks the law, the penalty applies only to them.
In the long run this solves nothing -- it just makes it likely that in the future we'll face the exact same problem, but from some company other than MS.
No, not enforcing the law would make it more likely that in the future we'll face the exact same problem, either from MS or from another company, because they'd know there's no penalty for breaking the law. Enforcing the law means that the next company after MS will be more likely to think twice before illegally abusing its monopoly.
I get your point that the current laws and the EU's decision don't address the greater underlying issues in a way that fixes the problem entirely, rather than just in the specific case of MS. That's true, but means nothing as to whether the EU's action against MS was appropriate. You may as well say that because the law as it stands does not address the underlying problems of violent crime, we should not prosecute a particular case of aggravated assault. That's nonsense. If the problem is that the law is not over-arching enough, the solution is not to enforce the law less.
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:2, Insightful)
I realize you're probably trolling, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're merely woefully ignorant. Here's a newsflash: options 2 and 3 are the same thing, because all three of those companies -- yes, including Apple -- are vending non-proprietary systems!
Re:why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:3, Insightful)
The human mind can be remarkably pliable in solving unpleasant internal conflicts. Consider all the terrible things that humans consciously do to other humans, and the extremely distant and abstract cries of open-source proponents and competing businesses are relatively simple to ignore. Even if he recognizes what he's doing, he could just buy back his conscience with charitable donations.
So in addition to being rich and an asshole, I'd imagine that he has a pretty high self-esteem, and has no problems falling asleep at night..
Re:why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF are you talking about? I'm not the same guy you were replying to, you know. I didn't even mention either of those things, let alone get angry about them!
Thank you, that was (part of) my point! You can't just blithely assume success without a good reason, and you didn't give one.
But you just said "it's far to [sic] early to call," contradicting yourself. Which did you mean: that people should believe it's too early to call, or that people should believe it'll pay off? You have to pick one, not both!
Here's my position: both Xbox and Zune have been around long enough that they should have paid off by now. Zune is an utter failure, and Xbox is an also-ran at best. (If you want an example of what an actual success in the gaming market would have looked like, look at the Playstation 1. A successful Xbox would have relegated Sony to an also-ran and killed Nintendo in the same way that the PS1 did those things to Nintendo and Sega (respectively).
Fashion and Fashionable. (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you sure you didn't confuse fashion and fashionable?
Re:why? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't own any Yahoo stock atm, but they will probably get bought for $33 a share; so your and smart money's rhetoric doesn't mean much anyhow
Re:Xbox Fiasco, Zune, Vista, Stock Price (Score:3, Insightful)