Ballmer To Retire

Today Microsoft announced that CEO Steve Ballmer will be retiring within the next 12 months. He said, "There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time. ... My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction." Ballmer, 57, has been Microsoft's CEO since taking over the role from Bill Gates in January, 2000. The company's board of directors has formed a committee to find a replacement for Ballmer, and he will continue his duties until a new CEO is found. Questions about Ballmer's fitness to remain CEO have been circulating for the past several years, particularly after the company struggled to get a foothold in the mobile market. It will be interesting to see how this affects Microsoft's stock price. Upon retirement, Ballmer will be able to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Microsoft stock.

Re:Good news for stockholders

[halfEvilTech]

Actually opened $2.78 up or about 8.7% so yea basically

Re:Surface

[geek]

Failure of Windows 8
Failure of Xbox One
Failure of Vista
Failure of the Kin
Failure of the Zune
Failure of Windows Phone 7
Failure of Windows Phone 8
Need I go on? You can only fuck up so many times before the board sends you packing. I'm amazed he lasted this long.

Re:Steve Jobs Still A Better CEO

[slashmydots]

He was a borderline mental patient who did everything he could to try and ruin Apple but his staff and board and engineers reined him back into reality so they could release sort of good products. I wouldn't put Steve Jobs in charge of walking my dog because somehow he'd find a way to overheat it and embed a non-removeable battery in it.

Re:Ballmer leaving.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, lets see if this will change anything. If history is any hint and Ballmer has his say he'll appoint a college-days crony. If they're smart they'll hire some one from Facebook, Twitter, some one from new media.

I can help clear that up, having done my due diligence in reading the summary. It will be the board of directors who hires Ballmer's replacement, not Ballmer himself. So it appears Ballmer doesn't get a say in this.

Re:Ballmer made $20 billion for investors today

[gstoddart]

It is funny that the value of MSFT with Ballmer in it is $20 Billion less than MSFT without Ballmer in it!

Today, on the initial news, based on speculative market players making trades ... by next week the price of Microsoft will be fluctuating on some other random basis.

I've always found the stock market to be amusing -- because it makes huge swings on things which haven't happened yet, and by the time those things happen they've moved on to being excited/angry about something else entirely.

It's almost as if the stock market is more valuable at predicting the emotions of investors, than any actual financial factors. And in many cases, the actual financials don't seem important -- like when companies are worth more than they're going to earn for the next 20 years.

Re:Surface

[Saint Gerbil]

Its a bit harsh to say the Xbox One has failed sure its had some bad press and the flip flopping on policies that has followed.
But its not out yet.
And its still sold out nearly everywhere like the PS4.

It would be fair to say it in 12 months time when he is leaving (whatever state it's in then)

Re:Balmer

[binarylarry]

He's featured in Pirate of Silicon Valley: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/ [imdb.com]

He's actually one of the more agreeable characters (and voiced by John Di Maggio aka the voice of Bender)

Re:Disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no. Look at MSFT ticker, it's up nearly 10%.

In summary: the fact that people like like you are on this website is a good indicator of why it is becoming fucking annoying to any person who actually knows anything.

Re:Truthful

[Gavagai80]

As long as most printers and wireless cards and such are windows-only, as long as people send you docx files, as long as there are non-standard behaviors in MSIE that have to be tested for, as long as netflix uses silverlight... the windows monopoly still causes the linux user some annoyance in every day life.

Totally different

[SuperKendall]

One bright spot is Apple blatantly ripping off Metro for iOS 7

You couldn't be more wrong and ignorant if you tried.

Just because they both dropped 3D bevels does not make them the same.

iOS does not have clipped areas like Metro, and has multiple layers of depth totally UNLIKE metro.

What's sad is most of the world thinks as you do and has no idea what is to come.

Re:Disagree

[oreiasecaman]

Equally, the XBox Kinect was an innovative product that truly deserves credit.

They didn't invent it though, they licensed the most critical parts

http://www.primesense.com/casestudies/kinect/ [primesense.com]