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).