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Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

(danluu.com)
371 points greggyb | 1 comments | 28 Oct 24 21:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source
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fnord123 ◴[28 Oct 24 22:30 UTC] No.41977194[source]▶
A rare miss by Mr. Luu.

> Ballmer wins... 2010: Microsoft creates Azure

The Azure project was run by Nadella before he became CEO. And it succeeded despite Ballmer. Azure was seen as the Microsoft cloud, where people ran Windows Servers. But Microsoft had long lost the battle for the server space to Linux.

When Ballmer stepped aside, only then could Nadella drop the limiters and push the Microsoft <3 Linux perspective to get the message out that Azure is a home for Linux workloads too.

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1. blackeyeblitzar ◴[29 Oct 24 02:44 UTC] No.41978851[source]▶
I’m guessing you don’t know any Microsoft employees who were from that era and sufficiently senior to know. Azure was not run by Nadella. Its predecessor was Bing and much of Azure then was just a reselling of Bing services. Bing was something Ballmer invested in and pushed for. Nadella didn’t drop any limiters or push the Azure perspective - that was people closer to Azure.