Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 784 posts

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#471

Post by acchow »

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #419
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.

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 fa…

> Did you grow .NET into the most widely adopted application development platform in the world?

More than iOS and Android SDKs?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#472

Post by gdy »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #468
adventured wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anybody think that there aren't limits to what one company can dominate? This absurd notion that Microsoft could have ever possibly retained "control" of the future of computing (apparently forever would be the requirement) is non-sense.

You have to understand that some of us, who were around and writing code through the 90s, are still a little PTSD about Microsoft. Back then, when Microsoft did control computing, it was easy to wonder if maybe they would control it forever. It was a shitty period. There was a sense of futility to building software. You could build small software, but as soon as you reached a certain scale, particularly if you were a…

What software exactly have been boxed out of their operating system with incompatibilities?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#473

Post by return0 »

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…

OTOH, Microsoft was a well established company at the time you are referring, while google/facebook/New Apple were startups. MSFT's competition was IBM,Oracle,Sun,Old Apple etc. Most of their generation are dormant names now, while microsoft's products are still popular.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#474

Post by bskap »

jahewson wrote: post #372
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…

.NET started as COM2 back in 1998 along with a predecessor of C#, so I'm disinclined to give ballmer credit for it. Likewise, Kinect was brought to Microsoft by an Israil R&D firm, it was not home grown. Kudos for executing, but the vision thing was always missing with Ballmer. He didn't just miss mobile, he laughed at it. He will be remembered for Windows Vista.

Kinect was home-grown, then halfway through they realized an Israeli company did it cheaper so they used that instead. The far more accurate version of Kinect releasing with the Xbox One doesn't use any of PrimeSense's tech.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#475

Post by mathattack »

Nelson69 wrote: post #439
rrrrtttt wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side note, I really have a hard time figuring out what was it that Gerstner did at IBM. When he started, IBM was the mainframe company. What is it doing today? They say it's services, but what are services? When I did an internship there, everyone I asked just shrugged their shoulders.

When Gerstner stepped in to IBM, they literally had their fingers in just about everything remotely related to computers and usually there was a product. Not just mainframes.. No joke, there were IBM branded type writers(!), floppy disks, joysticks and printer paper. (Effectively a marked up version of a product made by someone else with a logo on it and a very very expensive 'process' behind it that you could order…

The other benefit of services is you wind up having a lot of people at the customer sites. Instead of having an expensive salesforce, the customer pays for your salesforce as consultants.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#476

Post by blahbl4hblah »

woodchuck64 wrote: post #172
shrikant wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the Microsoft deal with Conduit [1], but can't dig up anything that links Microsoft with Babylon. Interestingly, that link implies that Conduit had a deal with Google before they got a better deal for switching to Bing. [1] http://allthingsd.com/20101201/conduit-dumps-google-search-f...

I think that's the point: when Google has refused to continue to profit off browser-hijacking companies, Microsoft is only too eager to step up to offer Bing.

Yeah...that's really selfless of them...you know, not continuing to screw people...it was ok when they started screwing people just not when the renegotiation happened.

Google isn't a person that lives in your neighborhood that you can trust with your weed-whacker...they excel at making people like you think that they are "on your side"...and you believe it.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#477

Post by crazypyro »

clarky07 wrote: post #462
kjhughes wrote: post #61

What were the key Ballmer era highlights? == Negatives == * Clashes with Gates during CEO transition of power: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261241035146237.html * Developer relations / motivational speaking (thanks mathattack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc * Employee retention (thanks JonnieCache, Ziomislaw): http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/microsoft-ceo-im-going... * Windows Phone: http://…

==Positive== He grew revenue and profits at incredible levels. He doesn't get credit because the stock price hasn't gone up, but that is just because he took over during the tech bubble and Microsoft was greatly overvalued at the time. I think profit has more than tripled since he started.

In the last year alone, he has increased profits by around 20% (which is 5 billion dollars, not pocket change). People don't give him enough credit.
Post reply on HN