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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

(danluu.com)
371 points greggyb | 2 comments | 28 Oct 24 21:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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exabrial ◴[28 Oct 24 22:11 UTC] No.41976993[source]▶
No he wasn’t haha. The only thing he did was slide the company sideways via pre existing illegal monopoly. In fact, they lost most of their monopoly under his supervision . At no point did the quality of their products improve, and that’s evidenced with this year’s massive massive Windows outage, or Garmins mega ransomware, out a hundred other people who’ve been hacked via Windows.

If you’re running Windows for anything, it’s only a matter of when, not if.

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abirch ◴[28 Oct 24 22:17 UTC] No.41977048[source]▶
I remember when he retired and the MSFT jumped. Satya is underrated.
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parl_match ◴[28 Oct 24 22:19 UTC] No.41977070[source]▶
Satya's tenure has seen the fall of Xbox, the lost relevance of Windows. While moving to a services model is going to be very lucrative for them, they risk competitors offering swap-out models.
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1. wkat4242 ◴[28 Oct 24 23:54 UTC] No.41977871[source]▶
> the lost relevance of Windows.

Yes but this doesn't matter. The market has evolved.

macOS has also lost a lot of relevance in Apple's world, but it doesn't matter. Because they are raking it in by the billions on the iPhone.

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2. parl_match ◴[30 Oct 24 23:23 UTC] No.42001672[source]▶
In Apple's case, the lost relevance of one platform lead to the increase in relevance of another one - that they controlled. Microsoft has no such "luck".

Also, it does matter, because there's over a billion Windows PCs in active use. It's still relevant, but it's getting eroded. That's a huge issue.