Cisco, Oracle and IBM actually have some customer service.
As for Oracle -- never dealing with them again if I can help it.
Meanwhile in google land, you can literally be bring in millions of dollars worth of advertising revenue on your channel and asking for help from your dedicated Youtube contact/representative can get your entire channel retroactively demonitized
This means that even if you have 2 million subscribers and a youtube rep for support, asking google for help is just as likely to ruin you as actually fix anything.
In any case it didn't ruin him. He's still making videos for YT.
Most importantly, Ballmer's tenure is what made it possible for Satya Nadella to pivot Microsoft into what it is today. Realistically, Windows Phone was never going to beat Apple, Bing was not going to beat Google, Yammer was not going to be the next Facebook, but Microsoft had to try and fail in order to learn those lessons.
The real question is who- if anyone- will be the Satya Nadella of Google, bringing the company back for a third act in the post-AI world. And maybe, in this new world, the limiting factor of human progress is not the number of CS grads who can solve coding puzzles.
Google is the web monopolist, and would never build apps like YouTube or Maps for a Windows phone product, since it would compete with Android, and not have the market share of the iphone.
Microsoft tried making their own YouTube app, which Google had taken down. Without access to the Google web products, a new phone ecosystem is going to be dead on arrival
I agree Microsoft flubbed the strategy, same with Zune where they had a technically superior product but no commitment.
Platform reboots killed any developer momentum they built - Windows Phone 8 apps were not backwards compatible with Windows Phone 7 which itself was a clean break with Windows Mobile. A lot of trending apps like Instagram and Snapchat never released apps on the platform, so you had to use third party knock-offs that chased private APIs. Microsoft did build some great social media integrations that tied your contacts into a single local profile across platforms (Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook).
They also kept rebranding and shuffling services on the phones - for example Zune became Xbox Music became Groove.
There were 200K apps in the windows phone store, that would have run on day one when windows 8 released. Instead Sinofsky wanted to kneecap devdiv, and created windows rt API, which was a C++ mess that led to developers completely abandoning the windows platform.
All app development on windows phone stopped when windows rt for windows 8 was announced. Windows phone was miles ahead of Android at that point. In terms of apps they had 200K in comparison to Androids 500-800K apps.
No. It's not. Which is to say, why do we value "CEO makes money?" That's NOT valuable to me. Microsoft doesn't pay me, therefore the pure question of whether or not they make money is literally meaningless to me, and should be meaningless to you if you are not in their employ. I'm not saying it's bad either, but it's such a weird gut reaction.
Which is to say -- if you find out the CEO is making the company more money, you still do not yet have enough information as to whether they're good...
Surely you understand that jrm4's interests, specifically, don't factor much into corporate/national decision-making?
2. Microsoft has an actual enterprise business that is stable and not prone to disruption, they can swallow huge projects that fail easily without endangering their cashflows. This is NOT true for google, search (their core channel for ads) is getting grilled in the new future by ChatBots + SocialCommerce + non-existing customer support + known to launch stuff only to kill it shortly after + many people hate/ignore google alltogether. It doesn't matter if they can build a better Bot on their own, these huge margins are gone now, innovators dilemma.
3. "post-AI world" for me means achieving technical singularity, and what comes afterwards is strictly not predictable, including the fact if humans continue to exist at all, let alone the concept of "programming jobs"
Microsoft could have very easily found another Ballmer instead and ended up very different today. Main takeaway is they aren't really comparable and we still don't know where the winds are blowing for Google.
You mean marginally less obnoxious than it used to be?
Sorry, that isn't fair, but still I think they were less obnoxious back in the Windows 3.1 days.
If you're looking at business practices, they're a little less obnoxious than they used to be.
1. Continue to accrete new revenue sources and pivot slightly forever until you eventually do a bit of everything, "diversifying" to the point where you become in effect a small nation
2. Stick to your plan and go out of business
These are the two possible outcomes as a public company
Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc are offensive companies in that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Microsoft in particular is held back by having to support the platforms. Office as a standalone company would be worth more than Microsoft.
Also feature wise, why do I need a LinkedIn option on Excel.
But that’s what you get when there is 0 competition.
What we need in competition and anti-monopolistic policies. Not splitting up companies.
For starts let’s get rid of the fucking patents for all software.
As a matter of fact, I think we could crowdfund this. Watch this space for a link to my Patreon, where you can pay a mere $10 per month to blame me for things that upset you.
If you'd like to sign up for my special High Flyers VIP pricing, you can even call me and rant at me for the decisions of companies and governments that bother you.
I can take it! The buck stops here!
Responsibility falls on him at the end of the day to get this stuff right.
If internal politics are in the way of achieving high level goals it's the CEO's job to address those internal power games.
Nobody's flying the plane. It's on search ad autopilot and slowly crashing into the ground. Could make for one of the most catastrophic value destruction stories of our time.
And sure, 99% of his compensation is Google stock, but at those magnitudes the marginal utility of the dollar is zero. What's the difference between $100m and $200m anyway?
Presumably sundar is motivated to remain CEO for as long as possible regardless of the specific motivations, right?
Whether he is motivated by earning a billion dollars over a decade or he’s achieved pure altruism and simply wants to make Google the greatest company in history doesn’t really matter. He can only achieve his goals if he remains CEO. And as a public company, that means keeping shareholders happy. No?
>Whether he is motivated by earning a billion dollars over a decade or he’s achieved pure altruism and simply wants to make Google the greatest company in history doesn’t really matter. He can only achieve his goals if he remains CEO.
I don't buy this argument at all. For one, his goals are unknowable and might be what he plans to do with $200m/year, and he could justify anything to attain that $200m up to and including total destruction of the organization. Secondly, many people abdicate power if it's false power i.e. someone forces their hand in critical decisions. He hasn't done that presumably because $200m is more important to him than his pride or (Google) legacy.
As others in the thread are trying to explain, there is a huge stratification at those levels. A $1B net-worther has a very different ability to project his will onto the world than a $.1B net-worther, or a $10B net-worther. That matters to them.