

The Lost Decade: Why Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates. - genieyclo
http://www.newsweek.com/id/220145/output/print
Last month Microsoft rolled out Windows 7 and opened the first of a chain of new retail stores. As usual with such announcements, there's been loads of hoopla and ginned-up excitement. But mostly people are just relieved. Windows 7 replaces Vista, one of the most disastrous tech products ever. It also caps the end of a decade in which Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, stepped aside, and the company lost its edge.
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human_v2
Microsoft got comfortable, bottom line. They made XP (which rocks so hard,
btw) and then felt like they won and stopped innovating. The article points
out that Ballmer had a blind spot because he wasn't a techie, which I think is
very accurate. Once MS was winning, they decided they had XBOX to keep them
afloat but didn't really continue innovating. Now they are struggling to catch
up with the innovations other made during the MS comfortable-on-top period.
Really, imo, they should re-release XP.

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jleyank
What if it doesn't matter who the CEO was... Maybe it was the sheer size of
Microsoft that limited its ability - hard to turn on a dime when the numbers
are that big. IBM was everything in the computer business, and then they just
ceased to be interesting. At some point, Google will probably go the same
route.

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protomyth
The same could have been said about Apple in 1995. The CEO can bring focus or
can allow the turf war.

