4 ms·

People are quick to focus on the few consumer missteps of Ballmer while ignoring the huge strides MS made in the corporate/business space during his tenure.

by nojito 6y ago

macspoofing 6y ago
But did it? There was technological evolution in Microsoft products for sure (Windows Servers actually became viable), but that was going to happen when you run a company with thousands of engineers. Outside of that, what were the strides MS made? They started off with enterprise/desktop dominance, and by the end of Ballmer's term, they still had enterprise/desktop dominance but missed out on pretty much every other tech trend - from digital music, to cloud, to browsers, to smartphones, to search, and on and on.
- nojito 6y ago
  Azure started in 08, Bing is firmly in the 2nd spot to google MS apps are the most installed on iOS and Android. People forget that Ballmer left in 2014.
apalmer 6y ago
The real problem was Microsoft under ballmer completely utterly missed the biggest computing revolution of the last 20 years. Mobile. That put Microsoft so far behind everyone in the industry that it forced the board to remove him... He actually did a GREAT job in the enterprise space and efficiently maximizing profit in the other old school Microsoft sectors... Put it another way... When Ballmer took over Microsoft owned +70% of computing OS market, when he left they owned something like 30% and were stuck on a trajectory where today they are at like 15%... Microsoft was primarily an OS company... He more or less sunk the company
- nojito 6y ago
  Behind who? Go look at the largest companies by market cap or look at the fact that MS apps are the most installed apps on iOS and Android. Ballmer did amazing for MS and left a great company for Nadella.
  - dx034 6y ago
    I believe it's about potential. They could've been the second or third big mobile OS provider. They did incredibly well in enterprise (and now cloud computing) but they still left the field of mobile to Google and Apple. And there's no reason they couldn't do it, they had both the money and expertise to create something like Android.
  - jimbokun 6y ago
    > Go look at the largest companies by market cap or look at the fact that MS apps are the most installed apps on iOS and Android. But that's thanks to Nadella, not Ballmer.

People are quick to focus on the few consumer missteps of Ballmer while ignoring the huge strides MS made in the corporate/business space during his tenure.

by nojito 6y ago

People are quick to focus on the few consumer missteps of Ballmer while ignoring the huge strides MS made in the corporate/business space during his tenure.

macspoofing 6y ago

But did it? There was technological evolution in Microsoft products for sure (Windows Servers actually became viable), but that was going to happen when you run a company with thousands of engineers. Outside of that, what were the strides MS made? They started off with enterprise/desktop dominance, and by the end of Ballmer's term, they still had enterprise/desktop dominance but missed out on pretty much every other tech trend - from digital music, to cloud, to browsers, to smartphones, to search, and on and on.

nojito 6y ago
Azure started in 08, Bing is firmly in the 2nd spot to google MS apps are the most installed on iOS and Android. People forget that Ballmer left in 2014.

apalmer 6y ago

The real problem was Microsoft under ballmer completely utterly missed the biggest computing revolution of the last 20 years. Mobile. That put Microsoft so far behind everyone in the industry that it forced the board to remove him... He actually did a GREAT job in the enterprise space and efficiently maximizing profit in the other old school Microsoft sectors... Put it another way... When Ballmer took over Microsoft owned +70% of computing OS market, when he left they owned something like 30% and were stuck on a trajectory where today they are at like 15%... Microsoft was primarily an OS company... He more or less sunk the company

nojito 6y ago
Behind who? Go look at the largest companies by market cap or look at the fact that MS apps are the most installed apps on iOS and Android. Ballmer did amazing for MS and left a great company for Nadella.
- dx034 6y ago
  I believe it's about potential. They could've been the second or third big mobile OS provider. They did incredibly well in enterprise (and now cloud computing) but they still left the field of mobile to Google and Apple. And there's no reason they couldn't do it, they had both the money and expertise to create something like Android.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  > Go look at the largest companies by market cap or look at the fact that MS apps are the most installed apps on iOS and Android. But that's thanks to Nadella, not Ballmer.