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

621–630 of 784 posts

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#621

Post by jlgreco »

joering2 wrote: post #581
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We tend to forget that Microsoft ALREADY did what these "startups" did. MSFT already pushed the envelope and changed the way we use technology in our day to day lives. We tend to forget that IBM did that in a previous era. Another example that "in the end companies will seek profit and stability" and be an "enterprise software company"

OH, yes, IBM started very early and veery "promising" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

IBM had been around for something like 22 years by 1933. Facebook has only been around for what, 9 years?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#622

Post by RyanMcGreal »

Pxtl wrote: post #311
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…

Yes, but with C# we got ASP.Net web-forms. Holy crap what a technological boondoggle. In general, MS seems to have serious ADD under Ballmer. They introduce massive thundering huge frameworks every other year as some spectacularly big deal, and then drop them soon after. You ever noticed how every Office and Visual Studio version has a completely new suite of program icons? Are they deliberately trying to hurt the us…

Joel Spolsky's classic 2004 essay on Microsoft resonates as strongly as ever. He contrasts what he calls the Raymond Chan camp, i.e. maintain the integrity of the API at all costs, with what he calls the MSDN Magazine camp:

> The MSDN Magazine Camp is always trying to convince you to use new and complicated external technology like COM+, MSMQ, MSDE, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and its components, MSXML, DirectX (the very latest version, please), Windows Media Player, and Sharepoint... Sharepoint! which nobody has; a veritable panoply of external dependencies each one of which is going to be a huge headache when you ship your application to a paying customer and it doesn't work right. The technical name for this is DLL Hell. It works here: why doesn't it work there?

> The Raymond Chen Camp believes in making things easy for developers by making it easy to write once and run anywhere (well, on any Windows box). The MSDN Magazine Camp believes in making things easy for developers by giving them really powerful chunks of code which they can leverage, if they are willing to pay the price of incredibly complicated deployment and installation headaches, not to mention the huge learning curve. The Raymond Chen camp is all about consolidation. Please, don't make things any worse, let's just keep making what we already have still work. The MSDN Magazine Camp needs to keep churning out new gigantic pieces of technology that nobody can keep up with.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

Spolsky concludes, "Inside Microsoft, the MSDN Magazine Camp has won the battle."

Incidentally, .NET was what finally convinced me to jump ship from the Microsoft world, and I've never looked back.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#623

Post by windexh8er »

laureny wrote: post #609
SiVal wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. Others would come up with new stuff, and Microsoft would "embrace and extend" whatever got traction in the market by adding it to their near-monopoly OS/app stack at whatever price served the purpose of eliminating the inventor and taking their market. This strategy always made Gates paranoid, because the risk was that some alternative to t…

> Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. XBox, Surface and ergonomic keyboards would beg to differ. Not mentioning the countless other innovations that didn't become as popular as these ones. I know the Hacker News hive mind likes to perpetuate the myth that Microsoft doesn't innovate but it innovates at least as much as, if not more than, Google and Apple.

You had me until the Google / Apple remark.

My feeling of Microsoft is that they didn't understand their innovative success; XBox - or how to capitalize on it going forward. The 360 was likely the last product of theirs I will ever buy. The new console - not innovative and if they weren't paying attention to the fall out around the Sim City debacle then that's just added injury to insult. Baller is a bad CEO by today's success standards. He has always come off as arrogant and assuming. Not something an innovative company strives for.

The real dilemma here is that the general population has two unique metrics playing on them in a different manner today. One is a burgeoning idea of rights, ownership and privacy (which Microsoft Flys directly in the face of, in a very bad way) and then there is the subjective problem of attrition and interest that is eroding much faster today as consumers expect "the next big thing" every time a release comes ton market. It's one part "innovator's dilemma" with a sprinkle of fast flux perception.

Microsoft is a dead brand. I started saying this in 2004. I still believe it today. Why? Because instead of having more interest annually I have less. If Gates wanted to leave a mark on the world he'd buy back pieces and parts of the behemoth and set them free for the open market, but the reality is it will continue to fade away and generations coming into the world today will view the giant as relevant as tape decks and CDs.

The technology industry is in a period of change and maturation. It may not feel like it but my thought is 5 years out products will be more cohesive because consumers demanded platforms that were interoperable. If not, then the future may be a very stark and gloomy state of affairs dictated by a few who hold self-interest and money first.

I hope this industry doesn't follow in the footsteps of the financial industry...

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#624

Post by rdl »

tanzam75 wrote: post #397
rdl wrote: post #33

Since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a huge percentage of its wealth still in MSFT stock, I think Bill Gates can make a case to himself that picking the best possible leader for MSFT will save hundreds of thousands of marginal children. If I were him, there would be two candidates: Qi Lu (insider, obvious choice), or, for the ultimate in turnaround ballerdom: Ben Horowitz (from a16z). Either would be a vas…

> Since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a huge percentage of its wealth still in MSFT stock, I think Bill Gates can make a case to himself that picking the best possible leader for MSFT will save hundreds of thousands of marginal children. According to its most recent SEC Form 13F, the Gates Foundation Trust does not hold any Microsoft stock whatsoever. About 47% of its stock holdings are in Berkshire Hatha…

Wow, thanks for digging that up. I assumed BG had done transfers of stock, but I guess he sold it on a plan and gave the cash to the foundation.

Another amazing thing about the BMGF is that it doesn't want to be permanent -- spending all assets within 20 years of the deaths of Bill and Melinda, and for the Buffet contribution, within 10 years of his death. (Based on age, it's highly likely WB will predecease either Bill or Melinda Gates.)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#625

Post by StavrosK »

laureny wrote: post #609
SiVal wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. Others would come up with new stuff, and Microsoft would "embrace and extend" whatever got traction in the market by adding it to their near-monopoly OS/app stack at whatever price served the purpose of eliminating the inventor and taking their market. This strategy always made Gates paranoid, because the risk was that some alternative to t…

> Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. XBox, Surface and ergonomic keyboards would beg to differ. Not mentioning the countless other innovations that didn't become as popular as these ones. I know the Hacker News hive mind likes to perpetuate the myth that Microsoft doesn't innovate but it innovates at least as much as, if not more than, Google and Apple.

When people hear about Microsoft innovating, they think about the Kinect and the Surface, but Microsoft Research is very well respected in academia and constantly creates new technology.

An academic friend of mine frequently tells me that Google et al do not compare to MSR in either quality or volume.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#626

Post by harshreality »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #464
sheri wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tendency to believe that the companies which are doing well right now have 'won' in some sense. We need to understand that this is the state of affairs right now. There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT.

>There is a non-trivial possibility that Facebook/Google etc become lumbering giants just like MSFT. It might already be true, how do you distinguish between a lumbering giant and not without the help of hindsight? The public consensus on such things lags a few years behind reality. What signs have you seen in 2013 that Google is not a lumbering giant?

What signs have you seen in 2013 that Google is not a lumbering giant?

Google Glass (even if it's not commercially viable in its current incarnation). Self-driving cars. Android. Hot air balloon internets.

They've also moved the industry forward on web security.

(Not to defend their Gmail and Google Plus divisions)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#627

Post by [deleted] »

StavrosK wrote: post #625
laureny wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. XBox, Surface and ergonomic keyboards would beg to differ. Not mentioning the countless other innovations that didn't become as popular as these ones. I know the Hacker News hive mind likes to perpetuate the myth that Microsoft doesn't innovate but it innovates at least as much as, if not more than, Google and Apple.

When people hear about Microsoft innovating, they think about the Kinect and the Surface, but Microsoft Research is very well respected in academia and constantly creates new technology. An academic friend of mine frequently tells me that Google et al do not compare to MSR in either quality or volume.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#628

Post by leetrout »

scholia wrote: post #584
tedsanders wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I find it hard to believe that someone who writes something this wrong can function in society. Please, stay civil. :) Anyway, I don't think the statement is wrong. Sure, Microsoft had tablet computers first, but I think it's also true that the Surface RT and Surface Pro were made in response to the iPad's success.

As a matter of fact, the development of the Surface software started before the iPad came out...

Citation requested.

Are you referring to PixelSense?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#629

Post by hhandoko »

mandeepj wrote: post #547
tlogan wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should compare MSFT against other companies in enterprise space. So lets take, for example, ORCL. From 2000 till today, ORCL become the clear leader in enterprise: they acquired PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA, Sun, etc. On the other hand, MSFT position in enterprise space is in much weaker position comparing to competitors such as ORCL. Enterprises will replace their Windows with tablets, but I don't see them rep…

"Enterprises will replace their Windows with tablets" really? What can you do on your tablet in enterprises? You can have them only as an additional device. They don't even have any port where you can plugin something. And, you will have your tablets interact with whom? At the end of the day, you need real machine running full blown OS to get shit done and not devices meant for playing with those face painting apps.

Thin clients for VDI for one, and the trend does seem to go that way. With current generation hardware, a good 1U server can support 50 - 100 desktop simultaneously.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#630

Post by Radix_ »

niels_olson wrote: post #597
SiVal wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's approach was different: let others innovate, then we'll dominate. Others would come up with new stuff, and Microsoft would "embrace and extend" whatever got traction in the market by adding it to their near-monopoly OS/app stack at whatever price served the purpose of eliminating the inventor and taking their market. This strategy always made Gates paranoid, because the risk was that some alternative to t…

Does anyone still use Facebook? Seriously, I'm medicine. It doesn't even come up anymore. The only thing that reminds me is HN. My daughter and her friends seem unimpressed. The only reason I haven't deleted my profile is that I don't want to cede the namespace. Don't cross the street to get your ass kicked.

I think there is something there. My 13 year old sister does not want a Facebook. I got her to get a g+ thinking 4 way video chat would be just her thing and she posted for a bit but she and her friends prefer Skype); the AIM of today. Ten years of that sort of success and whatever is HN then will be talking about FB the way HN speaks of Yahoo now.
Post reply on HN