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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

#331

Post by d4nt »

jasonlotito wrote: post #270
d4nt wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always felt MS is two businesses, an enterprise systems (Office, SQL Server, Project, Dynamics, Azure) business and a consumer devices business (Windows, Xbox, Phone, Bing) which should have started building hardware sooner than it did. They really need to either spin off a separate business, sell some divisions or just stop trying to compete in some areas. Experience shows their OS dominance doesn't count for m…

Cloud market? You mean Azure, which I last heard held 20% of the market. Is that what you mean?

Yes, Azure. It's developed into a good offering and I'm pleased for them that they're doing well.

But, there was a time when Microsoft entering a market would send all the existing players running for the hills. They used their OS dominance to control what software OEMs installed and killed off every desktop software competitor they ever had. Your best hope was to sell your company to them. But they couldn't do that with the phone, tablet, search or cloud markets. They've built some good products and some of them are doing ok, but they haven't had the kind of automatic win in those markets that those of us around in the 90s remember.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#332

Post by protomyth »

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.

Microsoft bought into Facebook.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#333

Post by seunosewa »

hrvbr wrote: post #300
DonnyV wrote: post #52

Scott Guthrie for CEO!!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Guthrie

He's more of a CTO. "CEO of Microsoft" is a prestigious title. They could use it as an opportunity to pull a coup. Like offering to merge with Facebook and giving the title to Zuckerberg. It doesn't have to be with FB, any big guy that would bring a missing market to Microsoft's empire would be a coup. But the reasonable thing to do is to hire from inside.

Why do you think they should hire from outside?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#334

Post by potatolicious »

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.

I'm no fan of Ballmer, but I think "insulting OEMs" is one of the good things he did. The OEMs carry a great deal of blame for the collapse of Windows. While Apple was shipping beautiful metal enclosures with great convenient features like MagSafe and magnetic latches, OEMs like Dell were shitting all over the Windows brand with plasticky (and still expensive!), heavy, unreliable, loud-as-shit laptops with terrible screens.

The same thing happened with WinPhone. MSFT spent a lot of time developing an honestly pretty decent OS, only to have its launch lineup filled with unimaginative, plasticky bullshit phones from Samsung and LG.

I for one think Microsoft's messy divorce from OEMs is a great thing, my only disappointment was that they didn't throw the OEMs under the bus at supersonic speed.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#335

Post by Tuna-Fish »

simonh wrote: post #233
seldo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reacting to new market conditions is definitely Ballmer's problem. Under Gates, the explosive growth of the web took them totally by surprise, and he managed to swing the whole company around, producing the market-crushing behemoth that was Internet Explorer 6, and green-lit the XBox on the basis that "convergence" (i.e. computers running your TV) was inevitable. Those two alone are really tough, smart, forward-think…

Except that IE was just a clone of Netscape and XBox was an attempt to duplicate PlayStation. Neither of these were original or ground breaking products. In fact with IE 6 he so badly misjudged the market that he assumed the game was over and didn't even bother continuing development. IE 7 didn't come out until 4 years later! Gates founded Microsoft's online businesses, which have been losing money ever since. You co…

> Except that IE was just a clone of Netscape and XBox was an attempt to duplicate PlayStation. Neither of these were original or ground breaking products.

This is completely irrelevant. By the same logic, iPod was nothing special, just another mp3 player.

IE and XBox managed to muscle into an established market. This is harder than making a new market, and should very much be congratulated.

> In fact with IE 6 he so badly misjudged the market that he assumed the game was over and didn't even bother continuing development. IE 7 didn't come out until 4 years later!

Not so much misjudged, but started seeing as a threat. IE development hit a wall because the meme that web-based apps will replace windows-based apps got popular, and Microsoft didn't want to wipe out their own monopoly. IE4-IE6 were, at the time, absolutely crushingly good. IE6 is now remembered as the really bad browser, but that is because they stopped updating it, and in the later years it had to compete with much, much better browsers.

> You count XBox as a success, yet MS is in the hole over XBox by over a Billion dollars and will probably never make money on it, taking past losses and write-offs into account.

XBox also supports windows game development, strengthening their main money maker. What is that worth?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#336

Post by smacktoward »

leetrout wrote: post #303
ant512 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

That's because that has been Microsoft's strategy from the beginning: let someone else take the risk of proving whether a market for something exists, and then, if it does, get in there quick with their own offering. They got into the PC OS business with MS-DOS after the Apple II; into the GUI business with Windows after the Mac; into the word-processor business with Word after WordPerfect; into the browser business with IE after Netscape, etc.

This is an established enough business strategy there's a name for it: "fast follower." (See http://www.businessinsider.com/youre-better-off-being-a-fast...).

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#337

Post by seldo »

simonh wrote: post #233
seldo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reacting to new market conditions is definitely Ballmer's problem. Under Gates, the explosive growth of the web took them totally by surprise, and he managed to swing the whole company around, producing the market-crushing behemoth that was Internet Explorer 6, and green-lit the XBox on the basis that "convergence" (i.e. computers running your TV) was inevitable. Those two alone are really tough, smart, forward-think…

Except that IE was just a clone of Netscape and XBox was an attempt to duplicate PlayStation. Neither of these were original or ground breaking products. In fact with IE 6 he so badly misjudged the market that he assumed the game was over and didn't even bother continuing development. IE 7 didn't come out until 4 years later! Gates founded Microsoft's online businesses, which have been losing money ever since. You co…

I can't really speak to XBox as it's not my field, but IE 6 was definitely not a clone of Netscape. I hate it with every fiber of my being, but Internet Explorer invented a bunch of stuff we take for granted every day -- the iframe tag is the first one that comes to mind, and they were also the first browser to adopt CSS, way back in IE3. People forget that for a hot second in 1995 Netscape started swinging its weight around as the dominant browser and introduced a bunch of half-baked ideas (the layer tag, for example).

IE6 was a terrible browser, but it was the best browser at the time. The anti-competitive behaviour helped, and then of course they sat on their laurels for years, but the best browser won.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#338

Post by zanny »

stephencanon wrote: post #107
sz4kerto wrote: post #45

Earlier 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…

This. Why is everyone caring about share price? Look more at revenue and market growth. Xbox took over consoles, Bing is the only search engine to capture whole percenetage points of search from Google, and they still have an ungodly monopoly on enterprise software from office to visual studio.

Most public companies could give less of a crap about their share price after the IPO. What people trade shares for is really inconsequential as long as the company itself maintains 51% and stock market panics on them don't leak to their profit centers.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#339

Post by devx »

rdl wrote: post #72
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://…

Positives: Only threw away 10-20b on pointless acquisitions (aQ, etc.). Successfully avoided buying Nokia, or pulling an HP/Compaq Fiorina fiasco, and didn't buy a big dying services organization to chase IBM. Also didn't do like HP's board with the lawsuits and revolving door CEOs and such. Avoided major criminal activity.

How about paying $8 billion for Skype, a zero-profit company, and almost paying $40 billion for Yahoo?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#340

Post by potatolicious »

microtonal wrote: post #236
prawks wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also don't forget Apple has had it's share of failures under Jobs (MobileMe, arguably AppleTV, their desktop peripherals always sucked, plenty of failed products, etc.).

Well, judging by the number of iMessages that arrive in a correct order on my iPhone/Mac and their inability to make iTunes Match stable, it's hard to believe that iCloud will be a success in the end. Under Jobs Apple made stellar hardware and good-enough software.

Ehh, I think Apple's software is pretty good - note that this is speaking as someone who writes iOS apps for a living.

Where they fail is web services. Apple cannot engineer a decent web service to save their sorry lives. The Cocoa API is pretty well thought out, generally well-documented, and pretty well-engineered.

Then you get into things where you have to talk to Apple via a network. StoreKit? [shudder]. iCloud? [terrified scream]. iMessage? Oh lord.

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