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Comment by jm4 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t get it either. Google’s reputation has been lousy, there’s something weird going on among employees and the company isn’t clearly advancing in any particular area. Sundar strikes me as Google’s Ballmer.

Satya, on the other hand, has been outstanding. Microsoft has transformed and looks like a company that will be dominant for at least another 20 years.

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I cannot believe the transition Microsoft has pulled off.

Living in Seattle, a notable % of my social circle was at Amazon for the last decade, but more and more are heading across the lake as MSFT reshapes itself.

Microsoft has made an amazing transition. Kudos to them.

Google would be lucky if sundar was ballmer.

Ballmer doesnt get enough credit for pivoting msft into enterprise...

Pivoting into entreprise from what? Microsoft always targeted entreprise first.

Ballmer was good at business and running the day-to-day housekeeping. But his legacy will always be that of Windows 8, of Surface RT, of dismissing the iPhone; frankly he didn't understand enterprise customers either. He was never the visionary leader.

He didn’t pivot to enterprise as much as totally forfeiting the consumer space.

I agree with your statement, but I'd say that at least Google has been advancing their machine learning/AI front under Sundar. But that's about it. You can clearly pinpoint the moment Google started going downhill the moment he took over, whether this has been the result of his leadership or due to the Alphabet restructuring, I don't know.

I won't make any comment about going downhill or not, but the Alphabet restructuring you're talking about came after Patrick Pichette left and Ruth Porat took over as CFO but before Sundar became CEO.

If there was a clear boundary between old and new Google I'd say it is around the time that Patrick and Alan Eustace left. Other changes in senior leadership happened in that same couple of years.

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