He says "<i>Gmail was laughable early on</i>". I got a Gmail invitation, through an acquaintance, before it was generally available to the public. I remember how awesome it felt in comparison to Yahoo Mail: (1) file uploads were handled after hitting "Send", instead of disrupting the writing of your message like the other web interfaces did, (2) it came with huge online storage, (3) searching emails actually worked which in combination with the huge storage meant that I stopped deleting emails, (4) spam simply stopped hitting my Inbox (a real problem with my Yahoo Mail account, which made my Y! account unusable), (5) it was the only free email service I knew that provided POP3/SMTP access and then later I noticed (6) conversation threads.<p>Ever since Gmail was invitation-only, it has been awesome on multiple levels. It has its ups and downs, but if I am to think of products that have been almost perfect ever since version 1, Gmail is right up there with iPhone 1 - i.e. missing features, but so useful and refreshing.<p>How can you fail to mention that Internet Explorer, ever since version 6, became the main barrier for adopting web standards, as development on it simply stopped for several years, with the team being sent to work on other things, like Silverlight? How can you fail to mention Firefox for that matter? In 2006 Firefox version 2 was barely released. It then grew to over 20% of market-share, without Mozilla making aggressive deals for prebundling it. Internet Explorer isn't losing to Chrome only, it's losing to Firefox and Safari too and they ended up in this position by their own incompetence or malevolence.<p>There was a time when Microsoft was serving their customer's needs. They stopped doing that in 2001, after Windows XP was released.
<i>Looked at differently, though, the third-is-right adage is wrong. More typically version 4 crosses the good enough threshold -- Windows 95 as the fourth from 1.0 and XP as the fourth from Windows NT 3.51, for example. By that reckoning, Windows 9 promises much, as v. 4 from Vista.</i><p>Windows XP is version 5.1 of Windows NT. I think it is really dumb to try to see "laws" in product versions.
Even if Ballmer was correct in identifying google to be a competitor to Microsoft a decade ago as the article states, surely this underpins his immense failing as a CEO - given a decade and thousands of intelligent employees he still couldn't set and execute to a clear strategy and address the threat.
There's one overriding factor that's preventing Microsoft from holding on to its reins. The company doesn't really understand simplicity.<p>I remember a post here about someone who worked at MS and how everyone just sorta waft through their jobs without wondering what else is out there. No one worries about Linux or other platforms really. No one explores new ways to do things or even fixing things that aren't solving an immediate problem. The description is hard to believe and reads like a dystopian city, but it's a good indication of why MS is going the way of the dinosaur.<p>In many ways it's the opposite problem Google has. They've gone above and beyond the simplifying and basically circled everything they offer around one account. So far, the closest thing MS has to offer is Live sign in, and even that is well after Chromebook in Windows 8.<p>Microsoft has always been about making it easy to buy. Not necessarily to keep and maintain. With most services Google offer, I literally expend no effort with upkeep. It's simple and it just works... well the Gmail UI is arguably worse now, but that's another topic.
<p><pre><code> For all Microsoft's CEO might have done wrong, he was
right about something dismissed by many (and I among
them): Google.
Ballmer started treating the search and information
company as a competitive threat about a decade ago.
Google as Microsoft competitor seemed simply nuts in
2003. How could search threaten Windows, particularly
when anyone could type a new web address to change
providers?
Ballmer was obsessed, chasing every Google maneuver,
often to a fault. Execution could have been better, but
his perception was right.
</code></pre>
Two main points that contradict this line of thinking:<p>1. The idea that Steve Ballmer's hostility could be recast as innovation is laughable. Microsoft was pathologically hostile to any competition, and it's obvious that this hostility was frequently tuned and recalibrated according to the success of the quarry. If anything, it only reinforces my belief, that if Ballmer were ever permitted to have is way, Ballmer's lifelong ambition is to destroy anything good, and replace it with himself.<p>2. Very early on, Google was a better search engine than most others, and it wasn't difficult to recognize. Using it, you found what you wanted, and you noticed it when you spent less time searching, and parsing irrelevant crap. Contrast this with the MSN home page (with the earliest form of Microsoft's version of a "web search"), which (like AOL) looks and feels like a supermarket tabloid. Ballmer's recognition can be readily categorized as jealousy, not genius. My hypothesis is that he tried out Google himself, he liked it, realized it was useful, then realized it was not under his control, and set out to either control it or destroy it. It's not inspiring. It's not mere competition. It's simply another expression of greed.
Microsoft had Windows CE, Tablet PC's, Hotmail long before Google had Android/Nexus, Chrome, Gmail. If they had developed / polished what they had, they wouldn't be chasing now. Microsoft just need to hope Chrome OS and Google Docs don't start eating into Windows and Office 365 and they need to be prepared to take whatever actions are necessary to prevent it (even if it is to give away a Microsoft Works type app for Android/iOS to entice people away from Quickoffice.)<p>The next CEO needs to find the right balance between focusing on the assets they have as well as picking the right fights with emerging technologies. That said, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Look, he's the CEO of the once mightiest tech company in the world and you satisfy yourself with: "he was right about something dismissed by many". I would expect that "[contending] with forces out of [his] control" is exactly the job of a CEO, not something they should get a standing ovation for, if they pull it off once in a decade.<p>So we should either all agree that most CEOs are clueless, add no value to their companies, and have the anticipating power of dart throwing monkeys in which case I wonder why we keep paying them so much. Or we believe that they have a higher role to play (I do), and we raise our expectations and criticism.<p>Note 1: that I'm not saying that their job is easy. It's certainly insanely difficult. But they get paid a loooot of money for it, so they have to be held accountable. And being right from time to time, here and there is not enough.<p>Note 2: my comment is specific to the article. I believe Ballmer did more than just one thing right, also I'm convinced he did many things right.
> In less than five years, Google did what seemed impossible: Launch and succeed with three new platforms, in categories Microsoft dominated: Browser, mobile OS and PC OS.<p>It's disingenuous to say Google has "launched and succeeded" against Microsoft in the PC OS space.
Running a company is not just about grand strategy, regardless of how big that company is. As they say, execution is more important than the idea. It doesn't only apply to startups.
I never felt any respect for Mr. Ballmer (, unlike Bill Gates), and I am just thinking aloud as to why:<p>I wonder if, like many other people, Mr. Ballmer found the existence of Google a perfect fit to his personality, which involves finding an anathema, a thing to be hated, and then sublimating one's energies into productivity by feeding on that hatred. Let's call this Hatred-Driven Development. Or rather, considering we are talking about a CEO, Hatred as a Strategy (HaaS). The reason such behaviour feels petty is that these people literally don't exist without the external object which forms the focus of their lives.<p>As others have pointed out, he had enough time to do something about Google, and failed, and that shows that HaaS is not enough. If you want points just for trying and just for hating the competition ferociously, there's a heaven for that kind of person; middle-management at a large corporation.<p>I believe that this is a story of how to make $15.2 billion in net worth by being in the right place, a rocket called Microsoft, at the right time.
I think <i>good enough</i> is an excellent lesson for most people, especially me. Fear of not having something polished enough prevents me from getting things launched on a regular basis.
Different view:<p><a href="http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/23/steve-ballmer-the-worst-ceo-ever/" rel="nofollow">http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/23/steve-ballmer-the-worst-ceo...</a>
<i>Apple approaches similar crisis, strangely soon. I predict the company also won't respond fast enough to Google and the shift from touch to touchless computing. CEO Tim Cook focuses too much on preserving revenues streams, rather than disrupt them as predecessor Steve Jobs risked so many times.</i><p>Stuff like this makes me think this guy is a jackass. Steve Jobs never "disrupted an established revenue stream" - in 1999 he started with nothing, and built everything from scratch. He died with the company in full throttle, and that's that. Never had the need or the chance to do what this author is suggesting.<p>Furthermore, how exactly can you fault Apple/Cook's performance post-2011? Their releases have all been solid improvements which have sold like hotcakes. Their products still command global consumer consciousness like no other brand. The iPhone and iPad stand as the centre of gravity of the mobile market, and the confusion and noise of the myriad products churned out by Apple's ertswhile competition only further cements their stature. Other than a few small exceptions (screen size in particular), they still control the focus of consumer desire - the average consumer only knows and cares about a particular feature once Apple has pointed to it. Watch what happens post-5s - if other phone manufacturers release a spree of devices with novel unlocking mechanisms, you can guess why.<p>Everything Apple has done has been profitable and popular. They're playing from a position of incredible strength, so why should they rush out and reinvent the wheel? They have time, their current position is stable, and it would only advantage competitors to reveal their next plans before Apple is ready or it is even necessary to do so.<p>I think the mistake people make here is in confusing what happened to Microsoft with what might hypothetically happen to Apple. But Apple isn't Microsoft. There's no indication whatsoever that Apple is taking their current strength for granted - moves like the new campus suggest a firm focus on and faith in a very long-term future. The only people who are dissatisfied with Apple's performance are impatient, ignorant tech commentators, who seem to depend for their sense of self-worth on a deluge of new gadgets to critique. It's a serious cognitive failure to imagine that just because Apple overturned incumbents, Apple must be equally vulnerable to being overturned, as if the marketplace just cycles through the same rough dynamic with little to no variation. Apple blew the competition out of the water because it was better, and in so doing it set a new bar for product and ecosystem execution that until now no other device manufacturer could equal - a bar which it has only maintained and even raised.<p>We're only now starting to see the market rebalance with Google and Amazon emerging as real competitors, with Microsoft a big question mark about when and if they will ever rise to the occasion. But the ball is thoroughly in the competition's court, so right now Apple can watch, analyse, and plot its next move. We don't have even close to enough data to evaluate Apple's "performance" yet because we haven't seen it.