
Ten Reasons Why Steve Ballmer Should Be Fired - raganwald
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0%2C2845%2C2317347%2C00.asp
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raganwald
A couple of weak points--XBoxes overheating is hardly a reason for dismissing
the CEO--but a couple of the points are right on the money, AFAIC:

1\. Stock price. That's Steve's ONLY job. The only excuse for a dismal stock
price during the same period that AAPL and GOOG have enjoyed great success is
to claim that anyone else would have made the stock drop and he protected
investors from actually losing money on their MSFT holdings.

I'm sorry, but anyone else with the same performance in a Fortune500 company
would have been gone a while ago. The only exceptions are companies with
family dynasties like Ford and Kraft, or Microsoft where Steve is Bill's long-
time friend.

2\. Milking the Office and Windows cows while the herd escapes the pasture.
The OP turns these into several different points, but they are the same point:
Releasing uncompelling upgrades just to keep the money rolling in while
allowing competition to take customers away. Steve needed to play better
defense, meaning customers should not be walking away from Windows or Office.

3\. Yahoo. Yes, the OP is right. The merger--at any price--looked like a way
for make things so confusing that Ballmer couldn't be fired until he cleaned
up the mess. It's a classic BigCo move: Do a re-org to protect management from
being fired. And there's no re-org like a massive merger.

Now that people have stopped criticizing Jerry for turning down the B$44, the
spotlight--and axe--should fall on Steve for starting the whole mess. How many
people have already resigned or started job-hunting at Microsoft when they
heard about the merger and the obvious impending layoffs and confusion?

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jaycee
This piece in a lot of ways reads like a hack piece, but I'd like to point out
the author's repeated examples of Microsoft stealing from Apple. In
particular:

 _Apparently Microsoft has already stolen...excuse me...incorporated "multi-
touch" into a preliminary version of Windows 7...I suspect there will be a
lawsuit if Windows 7 comes with anything resembling the multi-touch features
already found on the iPhone._

Multi-touch has been in development for approximately 25 years, and
technically in the Apple Vs MS battle, MS struck first with the Surface, which
was usable (if not purchasable) in April of 2007. The iPhone was available in
June of that year. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch>)

~~~
xirium
According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch> the Microsoft Surface
runs Windows Vista and costs between US$5,000 and US$10,000 and the hardware
for an open source clone is between US$500 and US$1,000. You're not going to
sell many Microsoft Surfaces when your local computer shop can make five times
as many for the same price.

~~~
jaycee
Granted, and bear in mind I'm not saying the Surface is a viable product--but
the assumption in the article is that Multi-Touch is Apple's, when the tech is
anyone's.

That Apple has the trademark is another story, and raises (for me) questions
of how trademarks are managed and issued.

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damon
There's only 10?

