Comments on: Ballmer on the hot seat at Mix

Amid hard-hitting questions from Guy Kawasaki, Microsoft's CEO talks about why Microsoft needs Yahoo and why its battle with Google is a zero-sum game.

[samkass]

Real or satire?

I hate it when I can't tell whether a news piece is quoted from The Onion or real life.

[J9after5]

Sammy, is that you?

Hey, I know a samkass and wonder...if its you Sammy, contact J9 :)

[ericmatz]

I'm not shocked...

...what do you expect from the guy who wrote "How To Drive Your Competition Crazy"? Must have been a funny sight.

[bobcode]

no 5 1/4" floppy

Still not 5 1/4 inch full height floppy on the MacBook Air.

I could do without a DVD drive if the battery was larger and filled it's space.

[Penguinisto]

No RLL disk either? Damn.

But then, my laptop DVD disk usage is kinda nil these days unless I'm transferring files into the machine (and even then the network does that just fine). I store movies on the HDD and watch 'em from there (which saves battery life _and_ removes that annoying optical disk whine).

/P

[Penguinisto]

Wow.

Okay, props for keeping his cool and not tossing any chairs.

OTOH, He's in deep Kimchi if he thinks that search is -

* all there is to Google, and
* a "zero sum" game.

Unless he can prove that there are ~6.some-odd billion Internet users (the current population of the human species), then search is definitely not "zero sum" by any stretch of the imagination.

Google already dominates in mobile web searches What with the iPhone taking 71% of the mobile web browsing market --global or just North America, can't remember offhand-- , guess what search engine is waiting there?

With Google getting into the wireless biz itself, I suspect that percentage will only grow.

Meanwhile, As Firefox continues to take market share away from IE, and with Google as the default web search page on it?

MSFT has a whole lot of catching up to do, folks...

...and not just in search. Ad dollars, maps, online applications, you name it, Google is eating MSFT (and everyone else's) lunch.

Methinks Ballmer doesn't realize that this whole market is a lot bigger than just search engines.

/P

[samkass]

Software... or advertising?

Google is an advertising company. Microsoft is a software company. The fact that they're competing shows that Microsoft is having trouble with their fundamental business model. Doesn't that scare MSFT owners?

[Sumatra-Bosch]

So Where Do You Put The Punch Card ?

Goon.

All of Ballmer's interview responses revolve around the theme of We Appear to Be Idiots Years Behind Everyone Else - But We're Really Not. Discussions about Vista track back to the theme, Oh It's a Horror All Right But We Think People Will Start Loving It Next Week.

Really, he should start a disco dance instruction school and leave running the company to Ozzie.

[spacydog]

No matter what type of fanboy you are, you have to admit that Ballmer was confident and cool yet lighthearted during the interview. This industry seems way too serious sometimes. I'm not sure if many other tech industry execs would have been able to be as lighthearted during an interview like that.