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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: 0.465s | source
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addicted ◴[29 Oct 24 02:19 UTC] No.41978723[source]▶
This article doesn’t understand what was fundamentally wrong with Ballmer’s leadership and what Nadella actually changed.

The specific technologies that were successful is irrelevant. Microsoft has and continues to invest in nearly every computer related technology that may come around the corner or they got late on.

The problem with Microsoft was everything went through Windows. The entire company was designed to promote Windows.

This was the fundamental flaw with Microsoft that Nadella changed. He quickly not just made Windows just another part of Microsoft’s business, to a great extent he actively devalued it.

The fact that Ballmer invested in Azure, etc before Nadella would all be irrelevant because under Ballmer Azure would have remained a red headed step child to Windows, so it’s unlikely to have seen much success under him anyways. Same goes for pretty much everything else Microsoft is doing right now.

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archerx ◴[29 Oct 24 05:23 UTC] No.41979633[source]▶
Well since Nadella I have been using less Microsoft products and probably won’t be using Windows anymore once my Windows 10 LTSC stops working.

I keep hearing praise for Nadella but all he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions.

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StableAlkyne ◴[29 Oct 24 11:39 UTC] No.41982839[source]▶
> he is doing is alienating a lot of customers with his terrible decisions

Windows doesn't even make up 1/5 of their income, and in contrast a bit over half of their income is Office and Cloud*

The real money is in enterprise IT and cloud services. The average consumer doesn't keep their prebuilt computer long enough to buy another version of the OS. They don't need to keep a niche within a minority (privacy-oriented customers who would buy an OS) happy with Windows to continue drowning in revenue.

It seems like he has done a fantastic job, if the goal was to decouple their fortune from Windows.

*Based on googling and a lazy reluctance to dig through their earnings calls

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_thisdot ◴[29 Oct 24 12:43 UTC] No.41983279[source]▶
It's a mystery to me why they haven't made Windows free yet. Surely they make much more money from users using Windows than buying Windows
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1. saghm ◴[29 Oct 24 13:00 UTC] No.41983411[source]▶
It basically already is, at least for consumers. You can download an .iso of whatever the latest Windows version is and install it, and although it will prompt you to put in a product key, nothing stops you from continuing to use it if you don't. You can't customize certain cosmetic settings, and there's a small watermark in the bottom left corner, but it's hard to imagine that it being fully functional otherwise is an oversight rather than something they're fine with. The only people who will go through the effort to install it like that and keep using it are the ones who are least likely to pay for it.
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2. nilamo ◴[29 Oct 24 14:55 UTC] No.41984460[source]▶
This is true: my gaming PC had that watermark for nearly 10 years. You can't change the wallpaper, remote desktop doesn't work, but that's the only downside to not paying for windows (and using Microsoft's free iso, instead of pirating a key).

It's quite clear to anyone who's tried it (at least since Win10), that Microsoft does not care at all if you pay for Windows.