Looking Back at Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's Former CEO and Mad Salesman through the Lens of a 60 Second Video Clip & Beyond
Microsoft's former CEO Steve Ballmer officially retired earlier this year and so as the year closes out, I thought it would be fun to show you a video that I discovered earlier today on CNNMoney that had me laughing looking back at Ballmer the mad salesman. It shows us his glory days as an enthusiastic young man ranting like a crazed used-car salesman. Off course it made him a billionaire and so he gets the last laugh in the end. But who doesn't want to see a virtual pie thrown at someone's face for being a never ending pain in our side for the longest of time. So on that note, enjoy the video below.
Under Ballmer Microsoft missed the smartphone revolution, the reinvention of the tablet with touchscreens, let their browser fall to 20% of the market, allowed PC sales to fall off a cliff due to neglect and angered the enterprise market with their radical shift to Windows 8, dropping the familiar desktop interface.
Ballmer was stuck with a mid-1990's mindset. He used to think of Apple as a nothing more than an irritating little gnat and laughed at the iPhone when it first debuted. It was a classic moment in time where Ballmer lost perspective and let his ego blind him of the changes all around him. He and Microsoft never recovered from the rise of the mobile revolution led by Apple.
In an interesting report published by the Wall Street Journal back in late 2013 they framed a moment in time where Ballmer noted was the beginning of the end of his reign as Microsoft's CEO: "His personal turning point came on a London street. Winding down from a run one morning during a May trip, he had a few minutes to stroll, some rare spare time for recent months. For the first time, he began thinking Microsoft might change faster without him. "At the end of the day, we need to break a pattern," he said. "Face it: I'm a pattern."
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Video Source: CNNMoney - Internet Explorer must Die
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