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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

#411

Post by workbench »

randyrand wrote: post #298
kabdib wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank God. (Speaking as an ex-Microsoftie). Hopefully MS will lose the "we need to put Windows on everything, including embedded systems" attitude. Windows is a horrible bloated mess barely capable of successfully running on a tablet PC, much less smaller things. (And if you've ever had to /build/ Windows . . . OMG. OMFG). There are core bits of Windows that are great; the I/O system is incredibly well done. Then the…

Not sure if you're talking about the kernel (which I've heard very good things about and has been ported to run on WP smartphones with as little as 256mb ram and crappy processors) or specifically just the windows layer on top of it but I don't know of any desktop class OS that runs on smartphones. OSX doesnt. OSX doesnt even run on tablets (not that it can't, idk) Ubuntu cant run on smartphones either. The edge was…

> any desktop class OS that runs on smartphones.OSX doesnt. OSX doesnt even run on tablets (not that it can't, idk)

what on earth do you think iOS is built upon?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#412

Post by untog »

eykanal wrote: post #145
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…

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.

Did MS miss social? They are a huge investor in Facebook.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#413

Post by alpha001 »

leaffig wrote: post #272
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.

What social property did Microsoft push heavily like Google does G+? Also MS was into search before Google was.

MSN (Live) spaces were somewhat popular at the time.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#414

Post by aceperry »

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…

'the platform is completely wide open for developers'

Like hell it is. If you're a small individual developer, you get the 3rd class treatment and access to their "open" api. If you're a big company, you get much more access to the OS than everyone else. Example: when WP7 was introduced, only large companies could make apps using the double wide tiles for their apps, individual developers didn't have access. This and MANY other examples were prevalent all over the platform. I know of an ex-MS developer who complains that only large companies get access to the faster and better undocumented apis not available to everyday developers. As for incredible features, WP8 also lags behind android and apple in many areas.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#415

Post by johnward »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #216
weland wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, IBM are still reasonably big on R&D, aren't they? Also, investor-wise people were happy with what he did. A thriving company doing i-have-no-idea-what is a better investment than a sinking mainframe company.

IBM is big on R&D in India...and squeezing money out of customers for projects they can't build anymore. I work for Microsoft, I don't want to work for IBM.

I was acquired by IBM and not sure I would want to work for either by choice.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#416

Post by Matt_Cutts »

rrrrtttt wrote: post #147
tuananh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide the source about the part " Microsoft actually has affiliate agreements with these companies to take a slice of the profits"?

Unfortunately I can't find anything in English, although Babylon was going to do an IPO in the US earlier this year, so you would expect there to be some information about them in English. The Hebrew article talks about how they are "diversifying away" from Google by making affiliate agreements with Microsoft Bing and Yahoo. The Hebrew article is here: http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1000874482 .

Interesting story; thanks for posting that.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#417

Post by gregors »

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…

.Net and C# are prime examples of Microsoft waiting until someone else invented something (Java) and then doing it again. The problem is that it seemed that was the strategy for everything! Very little innovation mostly just copying and one upping.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#418

Post by smacktoward »

Pxtl wrote: post #350
microtonal wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vista Most hardware was not powerful enough for Vista when it was released. It's the pressed who killed it. Windows 7 received glamorous reviews. However, in hindsight, Vista and 7 are not all that different. Most of the changes that daily users would encounter are cosmetic. Windows Phone Microsofts primary problem was that it was late and (as one of the consequences) there are not that many Windows Phone apps. Howev…

Vista was a catastrophic death march until it launched, though. It was pushed back year after year after year. The long gap between XP and Vista was not intentional.

Not only was Vista development pushed back, but the whole process was restarted two years in when it became clear that the original version was a disaster (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista#Mi...).

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#419

Post by Aaronontheweb »

eykanal wrote: post #145
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…

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.

Failed Windows 7 launch? What the hell are you smoking?

Has a lot of failures on his plate for one man? Please hand this comment an award for middlebrow remark of the year.

Let's put Steve Ballmer's accomplishments in perspective: Have you tripled a multi-billion dollar company's revenue over ten years? Did you launch the Xbox? Did you launch Windows Phone (10% marketshare in 3 years)? Did you launch Bing (growing faster than the search market)? Did you grow .NET into the most widely adopted application development platform in the world? Did you grow the Windows Server business out of nothing compared to where it was 15 years ago? Did you turn Visual Studio into the gold standard for IDEs?

Didn't think so. Ballmer will be remembered for one great mistake, and that's denying Microsoft's culture and employees a strong technical visionary over the course of his tenure.

Ballmer is a COO, kind of like the guy running Apple these days - neither Ballmer nor Tim Cook have a strong ability to anticipate changes in the way technology is consumed compared to their predecessors. And this is largely what's responsible for Microsoft's big whiffs - they missed the mark multiple times on the consumerization of technology.

People are already starting to grumble many of the same criticisms of Tim Cook's innovation that they did about Steve Ballmer, and who can blame them? Over the past three years all Apple has shipped are the same products they had before but with different screen sizes.

However, that doesn't mean that Tim Cook won't be successful in growing Apple's business, nor does it mean that Steve Ballmer was a failure.

As an ex-Microsoftie, I could not be happier to see Steve go. The company needs a technical visionary in order to stop having to play from behind every time there's a change in the market.

But to call Steve a failure is utter nonsense and requires overlooking all of the successes that he and Microsoft had during his tenure.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#420

Post by epo »

runjake wrote: post #388
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.

> For one man, he sure has a lot of failures on his plate. As do all successful people. If success were easy, everyone would be doing it. For all the ways I disagree with Ballmer, this seems like a poor choice to point out.

OK, name his successes. How has Microsoft improved on his watch?

Failures are acceptable if there is ultimate success, what is Ballmer's success? Retiring rich? (Most of which was accomplished on Gate's stewardship.)

Perhaps his name could become a unit for excess inventory. The "Ballmer", 500 cubic metres of unsold goods.

EDIT: or perhaps the name of a new airplane seat, "The Ballmer" the only chair to fly in!

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