Ballmer to Google: You're a one-hit wonder
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.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
At some point, perhaps not too far into the future, all of Google's many "test" products will achieve a critical mass, be roled into a single service, and could look a lot like a linux thin client running a Google Internet Operating System. The saplings are rapidly growing all around, and Ballmer askings, "where's the forest?"
But hey, Steve can go out and make completely illogical rants to magazines... that's fine. He just needs to have others be able to point out the fallacies in his statements as you have just done, Matt. Good article.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5oGaZIKYvo
Well some say M$ needs new leadership, I think Gates bowing out and supportively leaving him in charge indicates that this ship has never had good leadership and is built poorly from the ground up. As they slide they may try to break it up but I don't see much but the office team being valuable to anyone else, Word even though a bloated behemoth is still the defacto and runs well enough (better on someone else's OS) to best the competition for a good while. However, once the tipping point away from M$ dominated IT closets occurs and that won't be long they have very little in terms of innovative technology for anyone to buy and that includes the been there multitouch interface.
You may want to do some research before you write your articles. Just off the top of my head it seems like MS has a lot of hits. For example, just off the top of my head... MS-BASIC, MS-DOS, Office, Windows, .Net Framework. But hey, why look up the facts when you can make up an outrageous headline like someone is on crack?
You may want to do some research before you write your articles. Just off the top of my head it seems like MS has a lot of hits. For example, just off the top of my head... MS-BASIC, MS-DOS, Office, Windows, .Net Framework. But hey, why look up the facts when you can make up an outrageous headline like someone is on crack?
As far as CNET is concerned, Microsoft never does anything right. Never.
For 99.9% of computing needs open source gives you everything you need. It is cheaper and more reliable. Why people continue to buy MS Office is beyond me, other than the old maxim about a fool and his money.
Considering the Web is only 10 years old, it is hard to know which Businessmen out there understands current Web Strategy and what it takes to create a new Web Business Model that does rely entirely on Web Advertising.
I truly believe that Microsoft should look towards creating a future Web Strategy that copies the huge success that they had in developing a Desktop O/S - by creating the perfect Web O/S. But to do this, Microsoft would need to integrate Web versions of their popular Windows and Office brands into their current Web Services portfolio, to develop a Microsoft Web O/S Service.
Just as everyone brought into the Microsoft Desktop O/S, the same success can be repeated through a Microsoft Web O/S. But this Microsoft Web O/S Strategy could bring in much more revenues than Web Advertising, which could effectively be integrated into this Web O/S, along with a number of relevant Web O/S Services.
So instead of Microsoft wasting Billions of dollars in trying to purchase Web Companies that are a part of the current Status Quo. Why don't they spend some well earned cash on finding Web Strategists that can help them develop this 'killer' Microsoft Web O/S.
I would be first in line to sign up.
But you should also read Ballmer's own comments. He lists two hits for Microsoft: Office and Windows. Who am I to disagree with the big man? :-)
Meanwhile, microsoft cant seem to cobble together anything worth having. Vista was honestly laughable. I'm a poor person; yet when i saw vista for the first time, I truly felt sorry for microsoft. All those millions and they cant seem to make anything worth buying. They spend more time reacting to their competition and less time successfully executing a vision for the future.
Then again, I cant help to think they have no vision for the future. So many smart people, paid so very well, to do absolutely nothing, except repacking xp every few years.
"For example, just off the top of my head... MS-BASIC, MS-DOS, Office, Windows, .Net Framework. But hey, why look up the facts when you can make up an outrageous headline like someone is on crack?"
As a developer, I'd have to say that a development tool is not a profit mechanism, but a marketing tool for the OS. MS-BASIC was used to promote MS-DOS by allowing people to create software for it. The .NET framework is used to promote Windows by allowing people who don't understand how memory works to create software for Windows. The development environments themselves don't have any meaning outside of the OS that they promote.
In regards to scottdavidlowe :
"It's entirely possible that you don't consider Exchange, SQL Server, heck, DOS, SharePoint and some of their other products successes."
I think that it is entirely possible that most people don't consider those examples as successes. As for Exchange, it's basically a standard mail server and most people use the free ones with Linux or some other Unix variant to handle this. As for SQL Server, it got its ass kicked by MySQL. What does Sharepoint do again?
Just my 010'b cents.
They sold 100 million copies in it's first year of existance. The cheapest version goes for $99. I bet there are many other companies that had such a bad train wreck.
I have been using Vista for almost two years and it rocks. It makes Leopard look like the piece of garbage that it is. Overpriced, underpowered and stupid. Linux is such a joke and so are the people who use it.
Windows still has 95% of the desktop market. Microsoft hired 11,000 new people last year. There sure are a lot of jealous people in this world.
- by bigdbag June 23, 2008 7:54 AM PDT
- Matt Asay works for corporate open source. He writes obviously with a bias towards open source and has anti-microsoft views. It is shameful really that Asay writes with a complete lack of respect for his competitors. He is no better than Ballmer is to Google.
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- by The_Decider June 23, 2008 12:17 PM PDT
- Microsoft hasn't earned any respect. They have earned ridicule many time over.
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