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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

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Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#301

Post by dagw »

lbarrow wrote: post #23

He'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…

Microsoft beats out a number of other big name tech stocks over the same period (Oracle, Dell, HP, Sony, Nokia, Intel, AMD, CA), plus outlived a bunch of others. So while I'm not defending him, and I'm certainly glad to see him go, calling him terrible simple because there where other better performing companies in the same sector is a bit harsh.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#302

Post by wvenable »

astrodust wrote: post #232
sker wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've mentioned Windows 7 twice in this thread. By what measure do you consider it a failure? If anything, Windows 7 is the best thing released under Ballmer.

Windows 7 is not a success. It's just a non-failure. The only reason people use it at all isn't because it's fantastic, but because it's incrementally better than Windows XP without all the garbage Vista foisted on the user. After having used it for an extended period of time, the only real improvements I've seen are in the explorer shell, which are minor at best, and the theme.

Windows 7 is just the finished version of Vista. All the big transitions that started in Vista (UAC, DWM, new driver models, etc) are there in Windows 7. If you go back and look at Vista now, you can see how half-baked it is -- a mix of Windows 7 UI and XP UI.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#303

Post by leetrout »

ant512 wrote: post #266
film42 wrote: post #241

Earlier 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.

I think that's one of Microsoft's main failings. "Google are making baked beans? Why aren't we in the baked bean market? Let's make beans!" "What? Now Facebook are making Facebook Soda? We need to make Microsoft Soda!" Every time a tech company produces something new MS have to muscle in on the market, despite having a) no prior experience, b) no aptitude, c) existing products that could use their attention.

It does feel like MS just shows up like that. Azure did (and does) give that impression; Zune, as well. And Surface tablets are also a clear response to the iPad (whether MS ever had anything in R&D previously or not, they certainly didn't ship).

But I think Google is much more prone to jump in to a market with force, they just seem to execute "better" (I leave that open to interpretation).

FB comes out and MS buys in whereas Google makes their own social network. Apple makes the iPhone and Google makes Android. Only much later (as the ship has already left port) does Microsoft come in with Windows Phone (I'm only considering 7 & 8). Somewhat related, I feel like MS and Dell were on target with the Axim from a product idea standpoint but Apple really capitalized on combining the functionality of a phone and forward thinking hardware and software design with iOS devices.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#304

Post by Pxtl »

altcognito wrote: post #249
eykanal wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for missing search. And for missing social. And for insulting OEMs. And for his failed Windows Vista launch, and Windows 7, and Windows 8. For one man, he sure has a lot of failures on his plate.

Nope, he screwed up even bigger than that. As recently 2005, IE's browser share was well into the 90's. Now, it's hovering roughly 40% depending on whose stats you trust. This on the desktop , to say nothing of mobile which would make the comparison between years even worse. This is after Microsoft recognized that the web was their big challenge, after the so called Tidal Wave memo.

He allowed IE6 to languish while the competition was growing.

To me, Ballmer is symbolic of Microsoft-with-ADD. They ignore things until they become urgent, and then shovel money into the furnace until victory comes. Look at Windows Phone - microsoft had a mobile offering when iOS came on the scene, but took years to move on with WP7. Desktops languished on IE6 for far, far too long.

And Vista's long death-march process and lackluster result is another point.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#305

Post by tuananh »

publicfig wrote: post #273
JulieCompt wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple tried social and search* with Ping and Siri. It flopped. But nobody holds it against Jobs

Did Siri flop?

yes it did. I tried Google Now the other day. It blew my mind. Google Now understands every single words I said (Asian accent); As for Siri, 50% is kinda optimistic.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#306

Post by seunosewa »

RogerL wrote: post #295
wnevets wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is stock price the only measure of a company and its CEO? Unless of course you're a share holder.

The CEO's job is to make the company valuable. That's kind of a sociopathic view, of course (gee, I thought our job was to make heart valve replacements or whatever). But, that is the trade off you make when you go public. And, just in case it isn't clear, stock price + dividends over time should equal the cash flow generated by the company. So, looking at stock price over a ten year period is a decent proxy for eval…

The CEO's job is to make money (profits) for shareholders. Manipulating the stock price is not part of the job and is probably illegal. Besides, the OP failed to account for the dividends Microsoft paid during Steve Balmers tenure as CEO.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#307

Post by alttag »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94
lbarrow wrote: post #23

He'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…

Given his newly announced re-org [1], the timing is a bit weird.

Don't get me wrong, I think MSFT will be better served with a different CEO, but I wonder whether the two are connected. Certainly, the re-org will struggle without strong leadership to hold it together.

1: https://http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jul13...

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#308

Post by smackfu »

stephencanon wrote: post #113
smackfu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT pays a dividend. Just looking at stock price then vs. now is ignoring that. Very common mistake.

You need to consider both the dividend and inflation; $35 in 2000 dollars is $47 today. In the intervening time, they paid a total dividend of $7.69. I haven’t done the full inflation-adjusted dividend computation, but I would guess that it works out pretty close to a wash, but slightly in the red.

Well, technically it's not inflation you should take into account, but a safe alternative investment, like government bonds. But that probably just makes things worse.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#309

Post by tuananh »

localhost wrote: post #289
LarryMade2 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bad pat about windows 7 is that they put out Windows 8 way too quickly. There are a lot of people that would be OK with being dragged into upgrading if Windows 7 was an easily available option. Bu now, MS is pushing manufacturers into pre-installing 8, which is NOT a good transition path from XP as Windows 7 was.

Windows 8 shipped 3 years after Windows 7. That's a very typical upgrade cycle.

People get used to "Windows XP's style" upgrade cycle, I guess.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#310

Post by mig39 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #283
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>>>>He will be remembered for missing mobile Windows 7 and 8 were the first mobile OS that didn't completely rip off Apple, had the first original interface since Apple's iphone and you're saying they missed the target? Seriously? WP 8 has some incredibly original features my Android and Apple friends swoon over. Not to mention the platform is completely wide open for developers. It's not completely crowded out like…

Completely wide open for developers = nobody is developing for it?

It's like my Google+ account ... wide open for my friends. Except none of them are on there.

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