"Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1263580.Xx8LEX6bUg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> I don't see the contradiction... In this quote, Ballmer didn't say
>> Open
>> Source grows slowly or anything like that.
>
> True, but he appears to suggest that Open Source can be ignored rather
> than
> address it the way he did in one of the latest large press conferences. He
> described Google, Linux (and Open Source?) as Microsoft's biggest threats,
> which did not align with Gates' identification of Big Blue as the major
> threat. IBM and Google are great backers of Linux, by the way, so the two
> are not mutually exclusive.
Actually, to me, it sounds like he's saying:
<paraphrase>
Microsoft isn't worried about other companies; companies have always been
"easy" for Microsoft to compete with. Rather Open Source is its big
competition now, and Microsoft has made mistakes in the past with respect to
FOSS, but now MS "understand" FOSS, and know how to compete with it. Open
source is what Ballmer wants his senior people to pay attention to.
</paraphrase>
http://yahoo.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2006/tc20061011_940241.htm
<quote>
Who are Microsoft's top competitors?
[...] actually we don't really have our big competition from any one
company. Any one company, we know how to compete with. It's alternate
business models that we will have to embrace or compete well with. You give
me any enterprise software company, O.K., and I'll say c'mon. We know how to
go do that. We do do that. And we're really pretty good at it. We haven't
gotten any worse at it. Boom. Boom. Boom. We know how to keep coming.
[...]
We have learned how to compete with open source, and we will compete with it
for the rest of time. But competing with open source will have to be
something that's burned bright on the foreheads of our senior people.
</quote>
It's also interesting to note that Ballmer fully acknowledges that he's
learning a lot from the new hires at Microsoft:
<quote>
I would have been hell-bent and determined six years ago to call Xbox the
Windows Game Machine. We didn't. My natural tendency would have been to call
Zune something that was related to Xbox since we have some consumer
franchise. And yet, we're really building consumer marketing muscle. These
guys [the new level hires] are really educating us on new ways to do things.
These guys are having a fundamental impact on me as well as the company.
</quote>
Could Microsoft possibly "redeem" itself for its "sins" of the past? Or
was Ballmer coached to say this as a form of clever PR, to capitalize on his
poor image?
- Oliver
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