4 ms·

This doesn't quite line up for me. Ballmer, for his lack of technical foresight, managed an incredibly profitable business. People act like anybody could have j

This doesn't quite line up for me. Ballmer, for his lack of technical foresight, managed an incredibly profitable business. People act like anybody could have just stepped in to milk Windows and Office for all they were worth, but the focus and execution are easy to scoff at in hindsight. If MS had focused on mobile, who's to say they would have succeeded? And perhaps in the process of losing, also ceded dominance to an upstart in the office software space. Pichai may not have capitalized effectively on the impressive AI investments Google has made, but he has steered innovation in newer directions like AI and cloud. Technical victories, but questionable business decisions. I think one possible moral here is, sometimes the best opportunity is the one you don't take.

aaronbrethorst 4y ago
Ballmer succeeded in spite of tripping over his own feet repeatedly, not because of it. https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-stack-ranking-internal-structure https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
doktorhladnjak 4y ago
I worked at Microsoft during the Ballmer era. Profits and revenue continued to increase under his watch. They did invest in mobile from fairly early. Microsoft was selling smart phones (through third party manufacturers) in the early 2000s. They just executed very poorly on mobile by building the wrong thing for the wrong customers. By the time leadership figured this out and started to pour money into Windows Phone, they were too late to catch up. App stores and app platforms became critical to the success on any mobile platform. Microsoft didn’t sufficiently cultivate the Windows CE based apps enough. Then they ditched that app platform for a new one in Windows Phone 7, losing what little they had. Companies that had built apps for iPhone and Android had no incentive doing so on Windows at that point. Ballmer at least recognized the value of Azure, Office in the cloud and similar efforts. All the seeds of Satya’s success were planted during Ballmer’s reign. There was just so much fumbling.
- radlad 4y ago
  > Then they ditched that app platform for a new one in Windows Phone 7, losing what little they had. Companies that had built apps for iPhone and Android had no incentive doing so on Windows at that point. I remember this basically as around the time that Microsoft bought Nokia and produced some really nice looking phones that people were excited about... they had also just reinvented their app platform and nothing could run on them.
  - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
    The new app platform happened maybe a couple years before the Nokia acquisition. I don’t remember the whole timeline but don’t forget Steven Elop (who had been the business head of Office) left Microsoft to become the Nokia CEO, had the company dump their own mobile platform for Windows Phone, then when that failed closed to deal for Microsoft to buy their cratered mobile business. In the interim, Microsoft built quite a few phones mostly with Samsung, HTC, and Huawei, but also oddball partners like Dell.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Culturally my impression is Microsoft was never happy about digital distribution or really grokked it: even today, things like the System File Checker will ask for original installation media rather then just downloading whatever they need from Microsoft when a problem is found. Like it has always broadly felt like they were very late to the party on comprehending where software was headed (caught up pretty well with O365, but that seems like leveraging then entrenched nature of Office successfully).

aaronbrethorst 4y ago

Ballmer succeeded in spite of tripping over his own feet repeatedly, not because of it. https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-stack-ranking-internal-structure https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U

doktorhladnjak 4y ago

I worked at Microsoft during the Ballmer era. Profits and revenue continued to increase under his watch. They did invest in mobile from fairly early. Microsoft was selling smart phones (through third party manufacturers) in the early 2000s. They just executed very poorly on mobile by building the wrong thing for the wrong customers. By the time leadership figured this out and started to pour money into Windows Phone, they were too late to catch up. App stores and app platforms became critical to the success on any mobile platform. Microsoft didn’t sufficiently cultivate the Windows CE based apps enough. Then they ditched that app platform for a new one in Windows Phone 7, losing what little they had. Companies that had built apps for iPhone and Android had no incentive doing so on Windows at that point. Ballmer at least recognized the value of Azure, Office in the cloud and similar efforts. All the seeds of Satya’s success were planted during Ballmer’s reign. There was just so much fumbling.

radlad 4y ago
> Then they ditched that app platform for a new one in Windows Phone 7, losing what little they had. Companies that had built apps for iPhone and Android had no incentive doing so on Windows at that point. I remember this basically as around the time that Microsoft bought Nokia and produced some really nice looking phones that people were excited about... they had also just reinvented their app platform and nothing could run on them.
- doktorhladnjak 4y ago
  The new app platform happened maybe a couple years before the Nokia acquisition. I don’t remember the whole timeline but don’t forget Steven Elop (who had been the business head of Office) left Microsoft to become the Nokia CEO, had the company dump their own mobile platform for Windows Phone, then when that failed closed to deal for Microsoft to buy their cratered mobile business. In the interim, Microsoft built quite a few phones mostly with Samsung, HTC, and Huawei, but also oddball partners like Dell.
XorNot 4y ago
Culturally my impression is Microsoft was never happy about digital distribution or really grokked it: even today, things like the System File Checker will ask for original installation media rather then just downloading whatever they need from Microsoft when a problem is found. Like it has always broadly felt like they were very late to the party on comprehending where software was headed (caught up pretty well with O365, but that seems like leveraging then entrenched nature of Office successfully).