Mostly agree, but curious about the claim that Bing is profitable: how does that account for being the default search engine in the windows start menu and microsoft edge?
Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
51–60 of 714 posts
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#52"To sum it up, for the past twenty years, people having been dunking on Ballmer for being a buffoon who doesn't understand tech and who was, at best, some kind of bean counter who knew how to keep the lights on but didn't know how to foster innovation and caused Microsoft to fall behind in every important market."
It's important to keep the lights on while waiting for the next new development to take off. I think it's an undervalued skill.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#53Is there a name for this phenomenon when past leaders are viewed in a better light than they objectively deserved? I see this in politics a lot (eg Dubya) but in business too.
Rosy retrospection?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#54No he wasn’t haha. The only thing he did was slide the company sideways via pre existing illegal monopoly. In fact, they lost most of their monopoly under his supervision . At no point did the quality of their products improve, and that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows. If you’re running Windows for anyth…
Agreed. He was the "put windows everywhere" guy because he forgot that Microsoft and Windows weren't the same thing and thus he failed Microsoft AND Windows.
Microsoft is a software company, they sell software (and now software services). Steve thought that because their main product was Windows, that Windows was the only product that mattered and everything else had to depend on being run on Windows. Office sells very well on Macs. Office in the browser is really improving every year. XBox 360 was a huge hit while not really running "Windows" at all, just a related kernel and DirectX APIs; it wasn't even x86!
Steve made MS a Windows First company, and the entire company stagnated for years. He may have been a great number two to BillG but that doesn't mean he was suited to being CEO. Being the XO is a very different job from being the Captain, and a lot of times they take two very different types of people.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Satya's tenure has seen the fall of Xbox, the lost relevance of Windows. While moving to a services model is going to be very lucrative for them, they risk competitors offering swap-out models.
Gamepass and the lack of first party exclusives both seem like moves to kill the console in the long term, but as of now it's still a serious competitor to playstation and switch no?
In which region? It's basically irrelevant outside the US.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#56Is there a name for this phenomenon when past leaders are viewed in a better light than they objectively deserved? I see this in politics a lot (eg Dubya) but in business too.
I think this is a facet of human memory - eg thinking childhood was better than it was because the bad/boring parts aren’t memorable. I also get this with anxious/stressful periods of time, which are overwhelmingly bad at the time but very quickly forgotten.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#57The problem with Ballmer is that he missed a lot of opportunities. Satya is much better in that regard.
Is he? What did he start? Most of MS current successes were launched under Ballmer most notably Azure.
Satya has been good with acquisitions but what else?
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#58No he wasn’t haha. The only thing he did was slide the company sideways via pre existing illegal monopoly. In fact, they lost most of their monopoly under his supervision . At no point did the quality of their products improve, and that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows. If you’re running Windows for anyth…
I'm assuming that "this years massive Windows outage" refers to the Crowdstrike thing, which wouldn't have happened if Microsoft had been able to lock down the kernel, which antitrust regulators prohibited. (The essay extensively deals with antitrust, I'm sure you have thoughts on this.)
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#59A rare miss by Mr. Luu.
> Ballmer wins... 2010: Microsoft creates Azure
The Azure project was run by Nadella before he became CEO. And it succeeded despite Ballmer. Azure was seen as the Microsoft cloud, where people ran Windows Servers. But Microsoft had long lost the battle for the server space to Linux.
When Ballmer stepped aside, only then could Nadella drop the limiters and push the Microsoft <3 Linux perspective to get the message out that Azure is a home for Linux workloads too.
Re: Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if Windows is even their flagship app any more. I think people will give up Windows before they give up Excel. And they might not even notice a different OS, so long as it had the same file manager. In fact Excel is the last non-FOSS app that I still use, even if sporadically.
In some ways Office is actually superior on macOS. The fact that it still has a menu bar being my favorite thing it does better.
It used to have much funkier icons as well! Sadly not anymore.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_for_Mac_201...