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The XBox business started under him as well. IMO he was great at diversifying MSFT, but so-so at driving improvements in its core products at the time (Windows and Office). Perhaps this was just a leadership style thing, and he was hands-off on existing products in a way that Bill Gates wasn't (I think there was even news of Bill Gates sending nasty grams about poor Windows releases after he had officially stepped down).

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Look at OS market and Text Editor market today. They aren't growth markets and haven't been since the 2000s at the latest. He made the fight call to ignore their core products in return for more concentration on Infra, B2B SaaS, Security, and (as you mentioned) Entertainment.

Customers are sticky and MSFT had a strong channel sales and enterprise sales org. Who cares if the product is shit if there are enough goodies to maintain inertia.

Spending billions on markets that will grow into 10s or 100s of Billions is a better bet than billions on a stagnant market.

> he was hands-off on existing products in a way that Bill Gates wasn't

Ballmer had an actual Business education, and was able to execute on scaling. I'm sure Bill loves him too now that Ballmer's protege almost 15Xed MSFT stock.

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