These are trickling in on the Bloomberg website. Super interesting what Ballmer has to say about his relationship with Bill Gates, how they couldn't talk to each other any more after smartphones came into the picture basically... seriously watch it, it explains a lot!
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I did not find anything interesting. He was being too vague. Most of the talk was complete drivel.
Sad to see something as simple as a business disagreement split a relationship on a personal level.
And who would have thought that MS did not want to get into hardware ( when their Xbox's were doing well ) all because of Vista. They should have known that all tho they would have taken on more debt by going to hardware, while still feeling the hurt of Vista, they could have removed the loss Vista had on their pocketbooks faster then by just worrying about software alone.
At the end tho, it was great to see Steve reflect and own his mistakes as CEO. I think I hate him a little less then before. It was also nice of him to remind people that if it were not for him there would be no Surface Book. He seems to really want people to look at him positively. But lets face it, people will still remember him as the guy that released Windows Vista and Windows 8.
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Steve Ballmer was a good guy. He sucked as a CEO, but he is one of the key people that made Microsoft big. It was certainly not just Bill Gates alone. I think the biggest mistake was that US Government didn't split Microsoft up in sub divisions in 1998. Would have saved us a lot of today's issues.
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Things I take from this:
What kind of a person Gates is, I mean it's not Ballmer who brought out the crappy products, it's not even Sinofski who made the crappy Windows versions, it was a decision by the chief software architect... and it's not like Ballmer didn't make Gates filthy rich... so where's the logic and loyalty and normal inter-human interaction. All this was before the hardware thing.
Microsoft should change their slogan to: "What the hell do we know, we just pretend we do!" ... e.g. he's bitching about the 150 milliom loan to Apple to save them, but himself caused a 900 million instant write-off with Surface NT alone, not to speak about Nokia, which he destroyed by sucking it into a company, Microsoft, with the bad profile in order to work fruitfully even 1 sec with Nokia. He's also bitching about the necessity of doing hardware, but that's such a lie, he's covering up for the false decision of not opening up the IP and allowing third party hardware manufacturers to build up the ecosystem, like Google did with Android. There never was a necessity for Microsoft to go into hardware, the problem was that Microsoft could never walk the best route, because on the one hand, there was Ballmer who righteously saw that Microsoft needed to get into the devices and services market, and on the other hand there was Gates, who didn't want to open up and do it the right way, by releasing IP instead of hamstering it.
It all points to the same idea: Microsoft is a company with a lot of cowards hiding behind pillars, waiting for someone to pass by to point an accusing finger at, it's a company that is not aimed at going forward, but aimed at keeping a certain artificial status quo, obtained by unlawful means, and requiring ever more unlawful means to keep the status quo. It's a company with a very poor company culture, in fact, it's almost a governmental administration culture-wise, with that difference that the management never changes, even if it changes. It's basically a human tragedy, a black hole for principles and ethical considerations, not serving anyone, but always on the lookout to "do it to them before they do it to us". It's pretty sad to see how such things go south over nothing at all. It's pretty sad to see such levels of fail from basically above average intelligent people. It's such a waste.
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