"Pivoted" is a generous description. Scrambled is more like it. Ballmers tenure did almost irreperable damage to the thesis that Microsoft was a modern techno

"Pivoted" is a generous description. Scrambled is more like it. Ballmers tenure did almost irreperable damage to the thesis that Microsoft was a modern technology company that could operate outside cloth-walled cubicles and quarterly corporate financial planners. With every advance in Linux, Ballmer doubled down on in-house developed analogues and near-Khrushchev rhetoric against not just the OS but the fundamentals of open source. While Google and AWS catered with open arms to all, Ballmers vitriol led redmond down a myopic path of scorched earth ideations in the service of a dead business model. A cogent argument could be formented that XBox revenue and corporate license renewals were the only thing that kept Redmond from cutting staff and folding divisions during Steves tenure....divisions that in bitter retrospect should have folded far sooner than they did (Phone and the physical store for example.) Steve kept his corner office and the favour of the board thanks to quietly dipping into the coffers of these underappreciated touchstones of the company but in the 21st century...these werent growth. After saying in 2008 that he intended to remain CEO for another decade, Ballmer announced his retirement in 2013. Microsoft was running on fumes and while Steve managed to coast the hills, Satya was ready at the pump. The insensitive truth is that the real cancer all along was Steve.