Ballmer in the News...

I'm sure many of you have read articles like this today:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20066391-75.html?tag=topTechContentWrap;editorPicks

If such a discussion isn't taboo here I was wondering what everyone's thoughts were.

As an outsider I've also thought that Ballmer was the wrong man for the job, not a visionary, stuck in a 1990's mentality. I'm not saying Ballmer is a terrible person. I'm just saying he's not right to lead Microsoft as a whole. I would have loved to see someone like Ray Ozzie take the helm. Again, from the outside, it seems like Ray was taking the company in a good direction while he was there.

I think Anders should run the company. He is far and away the most creative person in the organization. What did Ray Ozzie accomplish at Microsoft? Azure? Is that considered a success? 

I think companies that are centered on a product need a product person at the top. Then business and marketing people report to the product person and are responsible for selling the product and making money from it.

While I think Ballmer make a lot of bad decisions, especially rebranding MSN to Windows Live and final wake up and rebranding it to Bing. The WL Messenger is still a horrible name though. And that pointless semi-smartphone in conflict with WinPh7 itself. And many more.

But, MS is so large and wide, it is hard to manage. The fact that he does not have health problems indicate he is not as fully crazed with managing the company. But, I think it is unfair to demand CEO to damage his health for a stronger company.

I vote for Robert Scoble to replace Steve Ballmer.

Microsoft is not nearly funny enough. With Scoble at the helm Microsoft would truly be the most entertaining company in the tech sector.

5 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

While I think Ballmer make a lot of bad decisions, especially rebranding MSN to Windows Live and final wake up and rebranding it to Bing. The WL Messenger is still a horrible name though. And that pointless semi-smartphone in conflict with WinPh7 itself. And many more.

That wasn't Ballmer's decision, and regardless of whose idea it was, it was a good idea. Branding all of Microsoft's online services as "MSN" made sense in the late-1990s when Microsoft's online presence was limited and it made sense to keep the brands together. But now it makes sense to have a clear distinction between the "online original content" department that runs MSN.com and the networked services that serve as a logical extension to the desktop Windows experience (Hotmail, Messenger, etc). I'll agree that "Windows Live" wasn't the best name, and they did back-pedal on their idea to rename Hotmail to "Windows Live Mail" (before confusingly renaming the desktop mail client as that).

The Kin thing was a bit of a *-up, but not evidence of any incompetence on Ballmer's part, it just shows how poor internal communication is. Had communication have been better then the Danger guys would have been integrated directly into the WP7 team.

@W3bbo:

I agree they needed to rebrand it, but, not some horriblely long and hard to pronounce name, Windows Live Blah. Live is not a good word because the ending is soft which is not clear and clean.

Don't know Ballmer decided KIN or not, but, whoever make the decision to bought the company is certainly responsible.

This is nothing new.  People have been complaining about Steve Ballmer and Microsoft's performance for quite a while.  What I've noticed is that every story seems to say the same thing -- even if they wanted to get rid of Ballmer they can't because there's nobody at Microsoft who can replace him.  I find this very hard to believe, but there seems to be a lot of people saying this.  If I was a major Microsoft shareholder I would be very worried by this. He's not going to live forever.  Sooner or later he will have to retire (or die).

I'm not a huge fan of the Live name, but I'm kind of puzzled why people are attributing it to the apparent non-success of the Live services. I mean, Xbox Live is incredibly popular and it has had the [platform] Live [application] naming scheme since the very beginning.

Einhorn's fund owns .11 percent of the outstanding shares.  After Ballmer finishes selling his remaining planned share sales this year he will have 3.9 percent.

I am having a tough time seeing the publicity for Einhorn's comments as anything more than media furvor.

Ballmer has a much larger piece of his cheese at stake.

16 hours ago, beerinbelgi​um wrote

I vote for Robert Scoble to replace Steve Ballmer.

Microsoft is not nearly funny enough. With Scoble at the helm Microsoft would truly be the most entertaining company in the tech sector.

If I could create a super accurate universe simulator, I'd love to have one of the open-source-is-all-that-matters folks run MSFT into the ground.  I suspect it would take about 3 weeks.

24 minutes ago, ScanIAm wrote

If I could create a super accurate universe simulator, I'd love to have one of the open-source-is-all-that-matters folks run MSFT into the ground.  I suspect it would take about 3 weeks.

It wouldn't cause Microsoft to die.

Assuming Microsoft is able to GPLv3 everything (including code licensed from third-parties, which just isn't going to happen in reality) then Microsoft will still remain as a company to provide 'official' service and support to Windows, Office, and other products.

Unlike soft-drinks, a program's source code is not a kind of secret recipie, most things can be re-implemented elsewhere. Reverse-engineering or access to the source code is only really necessary for interoperability. The world, at large, would not benefit from having access to Windows' source, except the baseline cost for Windows is now zero for people not requiring support.

MS would be forced to shed all non-profitable activities, such as MSR and products deemed to have little value. So they wouldn't be run into the ground, it would be more like a larger version of Red Hat or Novell. A working company, but nowhere near as grand or illustrious.

@W3bbo:A couple of things:

I'd argue that paying for a copy of windows is actually paying for official support.  I've yet to have to pay money when windows update downloads and installs a security fix or feature.  Why, then, should microsoft sacrifice that revenue?  The only people who gain from open sourcing windows are people who don't or won't pay for a copy anyway.  Everyone else loses.

What do Red Hat and Novell even do any more?  Novell employees should cover their eyes in shame every time they think about what Novell used to be. 

8 minutes ago, ScanIAm wrote

@W3bbo:A couple of things:

I'd argue that paying for a copy of windows is actually paying for official support.  I've yet to have to pay money when windows update downloads and installs a security fix or feature.  Why, then, should microsoft sacrifice that revenue?  The only people who gain from open sourcing windows are people who don't or won't pay for a copy anyway.  Everyone else loses.

What do Red Hat and Novell even do any more?  Novell employees should cover their eyes in shame every time they think about what Novell used to be. 

You notice how Google is a proponent of FOSS except when it comes to their core search engine? Or how IBM is a staunch supporter of Linux but keeps IBM i, AIX, and DB2 all closed-source? In an ideal world, FOSS would be a great thing. However, large corporations are using FOSS as the IT-version of slash and burn. You support FOSS if it will f*ck some other company over while you keep close guard of your own proprietary software.

@cbae:

I call it leverging FOSS. Google leverges FOSS extensively, and they contribute back when it makes sense to do so (ie. unlikely to harm their business). Apple actually does the same. Microsoft is one of the few companies that traditionally doesn't get FOSS (even at some point in history totally threatened by it), but over the past three or so years there have been major major advancements in contributing to FOSS from within the company with the establishment of the Outercurve Foundation.

They still don't really know how to leverge FOSS themselves though: the closet thing I've ever seen is the adoption of jQuery within ASP.NET.

@Bass:

Slightly left, but I see that an analyst has stated MS are making far more money from Android licenses (courtesy of patent royalties) than they are from WP7.

Now THAT is leveraging FOSS.

True. But I doubt even with all of Microsoft's patent lawsuit antics that they make any net income when you sum all the money they themselves lose from being on the receiving end of various patent lawsuits. Unfortunately Microsoft does not seem to have a monopoly on overly broad software patents.

zzz.  wake me when he is GONE.

What I would like to know is how can it be possible to run a company with so many vice presidents? Take a look, there are so many that the web designers had to group them by their last names. 

-Josh