"Why is Ballmer presented as an idiot and Page and Cook not?" Maybe because Page has not defined his company's success in terms of how many Nexus devices it se

"Why is Ballmer presented as an idiot and Page and Cook not?" Maybe because Page has not defined his company's success in terms of how many Nexus devices it sells; nor does Apple define its success in terms of how many licenses it sells to enterprises. Ballmer, on the other hand, not only has entered foreign market spaces such as Web search, hardware, and phones. He has also thumped his chest about how Microsoft is going to wallop the competition in those spaces. Google and Apple typically do not talk about how they are going to beat everybody else; instead, they talk about how good their products are. Ballmer laughs at other companies' products and enters the market late and says he will beat everybody else. Thus, Ballmer has failed on the terms that he defined for himself. He said he would wallop other companies. He did not. Not only did he not wallop other companies, but while trying to do so, he destroyed good products and hurt Microsoft in its strong markets. See for instance Windows 8, which is useless for Microsoft's big corporate customers and gets it nowhere in the tablet space it has so desperately tried to make headway in. So, maybe if Ballmer spent less time chasing markets that Microsoft is no good in, and more time reinforcing the company's strengths, he would not be presented as an idiot.