tl,dr; Board of Directors, "Buddy time to go, it's not working out."
"Steve, we feel you should spend more time with your family"
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
271–280 of 784 posts
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
So has Steve Jobs missed social and search as well? No. All companies need not do the exact same thing. Missing mobile is relevant because it is eating into Microsoft's PC revenues, but social and search is a whole new business that Microsoft didn't need to get involved in at all. In my view, Ballmer's mistake is to not go after Oracle and SAP much more than chasing Apple and Google.
Microsoft saw social and search and thought, "we must create our own!" While apple saw social and search, and said, "that's not our market, let's have google handle that for us." Edit: Apple did acquire ping, but that was social music, which is a bit different. They also introduced siri, which simply plugged in to preexisting search services (Google in iOS 6, Bing in iOS7) so it really is agnostic on that front.
What social property did Microsoft push heavily like Google does G+?
Also MS was into search before Google was.
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft saw social and search and thought, "we must create our own!" While apple saw social and search, and said, "that's not our market, let's have google handle that for us." Edit: Apple did acquire ping, but that was social music, which is a bit different. They also introduced siri, which simply plugged in to preexisting search services (Google in iOS 6, Bing in iOS7) so it really is agnostic on that front.
Apple tried social and search* with Ping and Siri. It flopped. But nobody holds it against Jobs
Did Siri flop?
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#274He'll be remembered as a terrible CEO. Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000. In the 13 years since then, Apple has experienced an unprecedented resurgence. Google and Facebook have gone from being obscure startups to giants. The tech industry went through the bubble, recovered, and today is stronger than ever. What happened to Microsoft? While the rest of the tech sector exploded and prospered, it stayed still. A MSFT sh…
Well it could be worse. (Nokia, RIM.)
I think he made one hideous strategic mistake -- deciding Microsoft was the Windows company instead of the Office (or "whatever makes money") company. If he had reacted to iOS and Android by selling Office for those platforms Microsoft would probably be making money off the mobile revolution instead of facing oblivion (or at least irrelevance). (Recall that Microsoft makes, or used to make, more money per Mac than per Windows PC.) Instead by emphasizing Windows over Office he made a whole bunch of people realize that they don't need Office to get through their days.
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#275He'll be remembered as a terrible CEO. Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000. In the 13 years since then, Apple has experienced an unprecedented resurgence. Google and Facebook have gone from being obscure startups to giants. The tech industry went through the bubble, recovered, and today is stronger than ever. What happened to Microsoft? While the rest of the tech sector exploded and prospered, it stayed still. A MSFT sh…
>>>A MSFT share was worth about $35 dollars when Ballmer took over
This is incorrect.
In December of 1999 the shares were selling around $58/share. Even in March after he took over the stock still hovered around $53/share. By May, the price had crashed to around $30/share - which coincides with the first dot com bubble bursting.
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don't think Microsoft's main product offerings are that bad. The biggest issue with Metro and Windows Phone is a lack of developer support - and I think a significant part of that is caused by a lot of the best developers being either Apple or Google "fanboys". Office remains excellent, Windows 8 is excellent at what it intended for - office productivity, games, VS development etc. But the media hates them,…
Bullshit. Microsoft crapped on it's developers, IT and users when it released Windows 8. How are you supposed to develop for a system when the frameworks change every couple of years? Not to mention pissing off independents, dropping TechNet and raising license costs across the board. Price out a decent MS server solution and 60 to 80 percent of the cost is Microsoft licenses. Azure isn't a solution either since Redm…
You are quite a drama queen :). Windows 8 applications can still be programmed in .NET languages. Given that probably 80% of the application is not 'front-end' code, it can be compiled without changes. On the front-end you can still use whatever was used before, since the desktop still exists. And if you want to go all-'Metro': there is a learning curve, but it is not that steep, since Windows 8 applications are also developed using XAML et al.
Disclaimer: as a OS X and Linux user, I don't know much about Windows.
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft saw social and search and thought, "we must create our own!" While apple saw social and search, and said, "that's not our market, let's have google handle that for us." Edit: Apple did acquire ping, but that was social music, which is a bit different. They also introduced siri, which simply plugged in to preexisting search services (Google in iOS 6, Bing in iOS7) so it really is agnostic on that front.
Ping?
Exactly.
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#278Wow, this is going to be the best thing for MSFT stock (and probably the company) in the past 10 years. I'm excited about having a real force to counterbalance Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon again. This, and the other company response to it, might be good for +0.05% GDP growth or something crazy like that.
> I'm excited about having a real force to counterbalance > Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon again. Are these 4 independent corporations somehow conspiring to restrict your choices in some way? :)
5 > 4. And really they're not all players in everything Microsoft does (Google is closest); FB isn't going to touch a phone again, and doesn't do a desktop OS, etc. Azure/AWS/GCE would be better than today (where we really just have AWS). Android/iOS/WP would be nice. etc.
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#279He'll be remembered as a terrible CEO. Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000. In the 13 years since then, Apple has experienced an unprecedented resurgence. Google and Facebook have gone from being obscure startups to giants. The tech industry went through the bubble, recovered, and today is stronger than ever. What happened to Microsoft? While the rest of the tech sector exploded and prospered, it stayed still. A MSFT sh…
I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten. He will be remembered for missing mobile. He will also be remembered for caring a lot about developers and about d…
A CEO gets to take credit for anything good that happens during his tenure? MSFT succeeded in areas where it already had a foothold through inertia, in spite of Ballmer, not because of him. Meanwhile, it completely failed in areas like mobile where it was initiating its presence. As recently as 2011, Wall Street was calling for him to be replaced [1], and I imagine now they're all breathing a cautious sigh of relief.
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20075745-75/microsofts-bal... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-27/einhorn-adds-to-dru...
Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
If an MSFT share was worth 35 when he took over (at the top of the bubble) and it's the same now then it does not mean (at all) that he was a crap CEO. MSFT still remains one of the most important tech companies ever, that's not a small feat. I don't think that he's an extremely brilliant CEO, but tech companies come and go, and MSFT is still close to the top. Even if everyone in the media is 100% focused on mobile n…
$60 at the top of the bubble; it was already in decline when he took over; surely not (entirely) his fault. On the other hand, $35 in 2000 dollars is $47 today, so that’s a significant inflation-adjusted loss of value. On the other other hand, they paid out $7.69 in dividends during that time, which is a reasonable portion of what is lost to inflation. Where am I going with this? Oh yeah, share price is not a great m…
Agreed, plus I believe they split 1:2 in 2003, which has to be accounted for as well.