Comments on: Steve Ballmer's to-do list for the 'day after'

When he looks down his bench, Microsoft's CEO doesn't have a no-brainer choice to put in charge of Yahoo. This occasion may call for a Solomonic decision.

[macoverdose_dot_com]

who in their right mind would want to go work in the microsoft fast food me-to culture... and imagine having ballmer as a boss... yeah no thanks on that one. Its to bad that this is going to happen to yahoo.

[cchenoweth6]

Glad I took the time to read this comment. Saved my life! I would much rather work for Balmer than slave driver Steve Jobs. Mr Mac Overdose.

[durango4]

You couldn't pay me enough to work under Ballmer.

[Aaron Kempf]

Uh why doesn't Ballmer.. 'hire himself'?

I think that Steve Ballmer should put Steve Ballmer in charge of it.
And for that matter--- I think that Steve Ballmer should put Bill Gates in charge of MS.

-Aaron

[hetzbh]

You wrote: "Rick Beluzzo had an impressive resume with stints at Hewlett-Packard and SGI when he arrived in 1999 to run Microsoft's interactive operations unit".
Come again?
The man basically KILLED SGI! Go ahead, ask SGI people who basically believed Intel's Powerpoint presentations about the Itanium and simply forced SGI to moved to this sinking ship? Rick did!
Who made TONS of mistakes in TONS of mistakes in MS Interactive units? Rick did! Don't take my word, ask them!

Putting Rick as *any level* of management in Yahoo, and you'll see the investment goes bye bye, although I'm not sure which will run first - the employers or the investment.

[whoopsie2008]

Rick Beluzzo is a total incompetent. He could just about manage when he was Head Ink Boy at HP, because there was practically no competition and HP had a huge stranglehold on the printer market.
His incompetence almost totally destroyed SGI. Even after he sucked up to MS by selling key SGI patents to them, thus paving the way for his role in the Interactive Units division, he still couldn't hold that position for more than a few years before getting kicked out - he is *that* hopeless.
He has repeated his 'success' at Silicon Graphics with Quantum, by the exact same methods - incompetent management, total lack of understanding of the corporate culture, the technology the company creates, and it's clients and their needs.
I cannot think of any senior technology industry figure who would be more suited to washing the floors at McDonalds than Golden Rick. The only time I would ever recommend him to a CEO position would be to my competitor, when I wanted to see them utterly destroyed.

[rexworld]

There's no way an outsider makes sense. They need to get Yahoo integrated quickly into Microsoft if they have any hope of challenging Google. An outsider would have to learn two cultures -- both Yahoo's and Microsoft's.

Better to make it an insider from one of the companies, so that they are already familiar with the culture from one of the two companies. Reduces the amount ofl earning they have to do in order to figure out how to integrate the various properties and technologies.