Intrinsitivity

I am impressed that Steve Ballmer at least appears to speak his mind. At the recent Web 2.0 Expo, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, mentioned his lawyers several times regarding comments that he should not make. In painfully sharp contrast, Ballmer essentially says, "Screw the competition."

I will be blunt as well. As a consumer, if Ballmer cannot deliver on his promise to be "a company that makes tools… to enable people to use those tools and make their own judgments as individual artists," then screw Microsoft. I have open-source.

The fact is that Microsoft has already screwed itself as a notorious idea thief. To make good on Ballmer’s promise would be a great start, but it would not be nearly enough.

Information should be free and it is not my fault that we live in an information economy. The solution, though, is one that our information economy has already warmly embraced, which is to bill the advertiser. Read on.

CEO Forum: Microsoft’s Ballmer having a ‘great time’

Microsoft has the most visitors. Yahoo actually has people spending the most total time with them. And Google makes the most money.

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IBM is an enterprise company. Google is an advertising company. Apple is a hardware company. They’re one-trick ponies, because there is a lot of groupthink in all companies.

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There will be a Vista. There will be a Vista plus one. There will be a Vista plus two, plus three.

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Q: When is your next operating system coming out?

A: That I won’t share with you. Not because we’re not hard at work on that; I want to let the team do their job, figure out what the release looks like. I guarantee you it won’t be four or five years.

Q: You mean sooner?

A: Yes, absolutely.

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Q: Google has been rolling out applications that are very similar to Office. Are you concerned about competition from Internet-based applications?

A: They’ve come out with what I might call — what’s the politically correct way of saying it? — they’ve come out with some of the lowest functionality, lowest capability applications of all time.

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In the short run, we don’t have a lot of competition; in the long run, sure.

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Bill Gates, before we shipped Office, sent the team some mail, "Hey, you know, I really love the user interface in the new Excel, but I didn’t know you were going to add so many new features." And he listed a couple things he really liked. And they said, "Bill, those aren’t new features." (Laughter.) Bill said, "No, I’m an Excel expert. Those are new features." And they said, "No, they’ve actually been there for three releases." (Laughter.) So, it had features that even an expert couldn’t find, and yet they were very discoverable in the new user interface. That’s the first thing I’ll say.

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Q: People get passionate when Apple comes out with something new — the iPhone; of course, the iPod. Is that something that you’d want them to feel about Microsoft?

A: It’s sort of a funny question. Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? (Laughter.) I want to have products that appeal to everybody.

Now we’ll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players. There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.

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Q: Would you agree with Steve Jobs that music companies should get rid of the digital rights management that makes it hard to copy songs?

A: I will not either agree or disagree. Every recording artist, in my opinion, is entitled to make their own decision. And I don’t think Apple or Microsoft should be imposing its will on folks, because people will have different economic interests, different things to think about. We’re a company that makes tools, and we’re going to enable people to use those tools and make their own judgments as individual artists.

Q: When can we look forward to a Zune phone?

A: It’s not a concept you’ll ever get from us. We’re in the Windows Mobile business. We wouldn’t define our phone experience just by music. A phone is really a general purpose device. You want to make telephone calls, you want to get and receive messages, text, e-mail, whatever your preference is. The phone really is kind of a general purpose device that we need to have clean and easy to use.