mr. ballmer hypnotizes his audience through his use of wild gesticulations and hyperbole.
Posted on 06/22/2008 9:47:03 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Steve Ballmer must be on crack. Or something. In a fascinating interview with the Financial Times, Ballmer has the cheek to call Google a one-trick pony (this from the company that has only managed two break-out successes so far), can't seem to come to grips with the fact that he hasn't budged his stock price in eight years, and takes solace in the fact that the company only has "one way to go, and it's up, baby, up, up, up, up, up!"
Please pass the vial, Ballmer.
One place where he comes down to earth is in his admission that he hasn't figured out how to compete with open source:
I've got to tell you, in every - other than the battle with Open Source, every other competitor, I love being able to come into a room and saying we're better and we're cheaper. We're going to try to say we're better and we're cheaper basically.
In the case of Linux vs. Windows, anyway, Microsoft is neither better nor cheaper. In its other products, too, it's losing that argument.
But it's really in deriding Google that Ballmer looks ridiculous. When asked about Google, he opines:
I mean, come on. They have one product. It's been the same for five years - and they have Gmail now, but they have one product that makes all their money, and it hasn't changed in five years.
I mean, they have a gestalt, but gestalt is gestalt. Let's talk about the reality. The reality is one product makes 98 percent of all of their money, search.
Pot, meet kettle. As the Wall Street Journal noted in response to this Ballmer comment, "The definition of death, in corporate America, is believing you don't have any competition. The definition of being in a coma may be underestimating that competition." Ballmer even said that Microsoft has only had two hits - Office and Windows - in the interview.
It is true that Google has had one big hit - search - to date. But this isn't an argument for Microsoft to make and then rest on its laurels. Bill Gates can riff on how great Microsoft is as an executor, but it has been at the Internet for a decade now with nothing to show for it.
Microsoft is still a powerful company. But if it continues to fritter away its power on dead-ends and lame products it is going to find that a decade of milking Windows and Office to the detriment of its future won't continue to hold water on Wall Street.
fyi
Google is a one-trick pony ... but it’s quite a good trick.
Yahoo investor asks to weigh in on Microsoft offer
********************EXCERPT********************
Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:37pm BST
NEW YORK (Reuters) - An investor with a minority stake in Yahoo Inc on Thursday urged Microsoft Corp to take its most recent proposal for a partial investment directly to Yahoo shareholders and prove its merits.
Mark Nelson, a partner in Mithras Capital, which owns 1.7 million Yahoo shares, said such a move by Microsoft would help shareholders gauge whether the partial deal was truly superior to an advertising partnership Yahoo forged with archrival Google Inc.
Microsoft abandoned a $47.5 billion (24 billion pound) offer to buy all of Yahoo last month, but more recently discussed a transaction to take a 16 percent stake in Yahoo and buy its search business for $9 billion. Talks broke down last week.
Microsoft said its alternate deal was still open for discussion, though Yahoo maintains that selling its search business would be tantamount to giving up on future growth in the wider online advertising market.
"Microsoft claims that it has a clearly superior transaction," Nelson wrote in a letter that he said was e-mailed and faxed to Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.
"Now is the time, prior to the imminent proxy election, to substantiate that claim and take it directly to Yahoo shareholders," Nelson said.
Yahoo faces a proxy battle against billionaire investor Carl Icahn ahead of its annual shareholders meeting on August 1.
Microsoft and Yahoo officials were not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Michele Gershberg and Daisuke Wakabayashi; Editing by Brian Moss)
He is correct that MS is cheaper than open source in a lot of areas.
mr. ballmer hypnotizes his audience through his use of wild gesticulations and hyperbole.
Ballmer ought to know...he has a Ph.D. in Buggywhipology.
What am I missing?
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Microsoft is not exactly a brain trust of clever people with innovative ideas either.
It is partially a lawyers’ creation built on copyright laws.
Examine Microsoft’s history: The basic icon interface was invented at Xerox and first deployed by Apple
The DOS operating system is a copy of something known as CP/M, and first employed and later owned by IBM.
The Excel spreadsheet was a late entry onto the scene of an idea pioneered by VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3, as was PowerPoint
The Web browser was was created at Univ. of Illinois by Marc Andreeson who later used it first at Netscape.
About the only thing I identify with Microsoft is the software patch!
No, Google’s “Checkout” rocks! Much cheaper to go through Google’s Checkout as an online merchant than to use any other credit card processing service.
Google also has online docs and aps and storage and email.
Google could flip a software switch and tie its searches into GoogleAuctions and then it would be the only game in town with enough traffic and cash to have a shot at knocking eBay off of its perch, too.
Or here’s a neat trick:
Send a text message to 46645 (GOOGL) via your AT&T or Verizon cell phone. Include in the subject line a stock ticker symbol, or “gas” or “food” and you’ll get back near-instant results based on your current location/time.
Now you know where to find gasoline, or nice restaurants near you at the moment on your drive, or the current price on your stock.
LOL!
You forgot about their rip-offs of stacker, wordperfect, ami-pro, netware, ftp-software, trumpet winsock, borland turbo c, magellan, improv, quicktime, real audio, x windows, berkley sockets, eudora, irc chat, intuit quicken, borland side kick, oracle, mysql, itunes, cvs and others.
Thanks,...I need a cell phone with text messaging then....hadn’t even thought of that.
Then there was the shyster way they tore up the development agreement with IBM on replacing DOS and snunk out the early abortion of Windows over the jointly developed OS2...
They actually did come up with one truly innovative, unique product all by themselves.
Microsoft "Bob"
And I believe it was Melinda who conceived of Bob (yes, Melinda who is Bill Gates' wife).
omg! I remember Bob!
I was a kid when I had some Bob program where you could decorate his house or something. I thought it was great at the time.
google is a bubble.
...and don't forget 'Clippy' the Word assistant!
Microsoft has turned into the biggest jump-the-shark story of modern times. Sad really.
I do not look fondly on the days of the infamous Blue Screen of Death.
Aw, what’s Steve gonna do...throw chairs at Google?
Off the subject a bit but when did FR add icons to their URL?
That was an offshoot of Microsoft Bob -- and was, like Bob, conceived by Melinda Gates.
Likewise the insipid Search Dog, and a number of other infamous "user-friendly" travesties.
I'm sure she's a nice person, but software-wise, she's a twit.
If you mean the little icon that shows up in the address/location bar, or in the Bookmarks/Favorites listings, that's been there all along. Maybe your browser didn't deal with it previously.
You're right on the money -- it was appropriate for kids.
The idea that it would successfully bring "friendly computing" to adults in the home was, ummm, ill-conceived.
My daughter, who was an adolescent at the time, likewise thought it was cool.
It must be a MAC problem....LOL!
Do you mean "MAC" as in "Macintosh"? Nope, my Macs have displayed those icons all along, just like my Win PCs have.
Or do you mean "MAC" as in "MAC address" (Ethernet)? In which case that went sailing over my head...
My boxs are black or Silver...
The search algorithm is terrific. I usually find exactly what I’m looking for as the first match. It’s easy to search for pictures and videos. Also, Google provides other services like e-mail, maps, finance (portfolio tracking), weather, etc. You can customize your home page, as I have, so that just about anything I’d want to check quickly is in once place. That’s the appeal of Google.
Yahoo offers all of that.
Nothing. The simple fact is, Google is just a website that people can choose (or not choose) to visit. Yeah, I use it, but if somebody built a better mousetrap, I'd be over there in a heartbeat. Microsoft makes operating systems and productivity suites that people have installed on their computers, they're not as easily shed as a start page is.
Say what you want to about Ballmer being an ass, but on this, he's right. Google came from nowhere, and it can just as easily disappear back into nowhere.
I know it does, but my point is that Google is more than just a blank page with a search box.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
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