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Comment by megaman821 | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe in 80+ comments no one has defended Ballmer. They basically predicted his imminent retirement but in reality Windows 7 was released and became the best-selling of version of Windows ever. Also, it looks as if he has locked in his CEO position of Microsoft for years to come. You don't have to be a Microsoft fan-boy to point out this article was wrong in their future prediction of Steve Ballmer.

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I think they were very correct. It's five years later, the market cap is the same (and shrunk if you account for inflation), Apple is over 100 billion dollars bigger by market cap, Microsoft was several years too late to offer an alternative to iOS and Android, Bing is still hugely unprofitable, etc., etc.

And Balmer is also probably the reason Microsoft is losing Ray Ozzie, who by all rights should have been Gates' successor.

IMHO Ballmer was never supposed to be CEO, except maybe on a temporary basis. MS needs a technologist at the helm.

Given that the userbase of personal computing devices (not necessarily PCs or laptops) is still growing and will be for a while, the point at which Microsoft offers an operating system that isn't the "best selling version ever" will be a disaster for the company.

Truth is: it's very difficult to buy large classes of equipment without buying Windows due to OEM relationships, same as it's ever been. I've got Win7 that came with my current Thinkpad, but I've booted it maybe two or three times, getting as far as logging in. Otherwise it's strictly been Debian. Haven't even bothered setting up Win7 under VirtualBox yet.

I don't know that Ballmer's been a disaster for Microsoft, or if it's just running down the Christensen "innovator's dilemma" curve, but the company's best days are behind it.

In ten years I see it as a legacy provider of business servers to late-adopting companies, ossified industrial giants, some government sectors, and, principally, gaming and entertainment. Possibly merged with Sony.

I'd guess that a few of those OEM relationships were probably a result of Ballmers dealmaking skills, so I guess he does matter?

I am not trying to argue he is awesome, he isn't, just that the list was wrong about him. There is no chance he will be considered a revolutionary but he has done an adequate job of maintaining against really strong competition.

Actually, Windows XP is the best selling version of Windows ever (maybe any OS).

From Wikipedia:

According to web analytics data generated by W3Schools, as of June 2011, Windows XP is the most widely used operating system for accessing the Internet in the world with a 39.7% market share, having peaked at 76.1% in January 2007.

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