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Comment by ko_pivot | Hacker News Reader

The latest Acquired episode makes a pretty strong case for Ballmer, implying that he led the Microsoft move to own all enterprise software, not Gates.

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I think the current CEO is definitely a good one. I just wish one CEO would finally focus on making Windows less awful for power users. Let us turn off all the useless garbage and have offline accounts. I'll personally pay more to do so. Give power users the OS they want.

Curious why Ballmer is coming up lately, did something happen with him?

All that comes to mind is that he is now surpassing the net worth of Bill Gates, to a large extent because when he left Microsoft he said he would keep his Microsoft stock positions.

I think Gates has given away ~$50B - which would seem to be enough to tip the scales? I'd rather compare the billionaires by what they redistribute vs. the size of their hoard.

Bill Gates controls the Gates Foundation; if you're trying to count his wealth, you should include its endowment, which it currently reports as $75 billion. (And it also reports that it has made $77 billion of grants since inception, so if you want to include spent money too, he's outclassing Ballmer without even considering his personal holdings. It's more consistent to just count held money.)

What you’re asking is not specific to power users. I have never seen a single user, “power” or not, saying they like ads and privacy invasions embedded in their OS.

Sure, but if they market it to power users, I'll take that as a win. Right now they're not targeting such a thing to any users. Until then, I'll stay on Linux, and buy Mac or Linux exclusive devices.

> but if they market it to power users

The point is they won’t. This crap they’re pulling is not an oversight, they know exactly what they’re doing. It makes zero difference who they “market it” for, most people would want to do it if they opened the door.

> Right now they're not targeting such a thing to any users.

Exactly. By design. And it’ll stay that way until enough users leave Windows. Which is unlikely any time soon.

The link: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/microsoft-volume-ii

I haven't listened to this episode specifically, but I have listened to probably 20 of their other ones. It's a solid podcast, although I wish they were a little more critical and not always so laudatory.

I got into Acquired through the Jim Simons episode which was great but the rest of their content is hit and miss.

Sometimes they get hard to listen to because they treat every company as something incredible and many of them aren't - the luxury brands episodes are completely bizarre, no idea who the target audience is for a four podcast on a handbag manufacturer.

And their SBF episode didn't age well at all - so much ass kissing. Credit to them at least for not removing it entirely.

I really enjoy the luxury brand episodes. Hermes, LV, etc. are huge companies that have been around for a long, long time.

Probably fair that he led the move to enterprise.

Also true it blew a very very strong lead in the B2C business.

What a great show huh? Recent discovery for me and I've binged the whole thing.

For those unaware: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquiredFM

I've never wanted to be on a podcast in my life but for some reason I want to go on it and tell the story of how we built DigitalOcean, I feel like they would ask actually good questions. Really enjoying them.

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