Saturday, February 21, 2009

Steve Ballmer - comedian extraordinaire

That Ballmer. He's such a joker. Imagine the riotous laughter after this straight faced delivery by Microsoft's CEO...
Slashdot | Ballmer Pleads For Openness To Compete With Apple

... At the Mobile World Congress, Steve Ballmer took aim at Apple's closed iPhone ecosystem with .... plea for openness: 'Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice.' Ballmer has apparently forgotten his company's own efforts to vertically integrate hardware and software (Zune, XBox), its history of vertically integrating software (tying SharePoint into Office, IE, SQL Server, Active Directory, etc.), as well as years of illegally tying Windows to Internet Explorer that only the US Justice Department could undo...
Nothing in that list compares to Microsoft's great triumph -- controlling the file formats for Office.

Sigh. If only people could remember how powerful a move that was ... and is. On the other hand, the Sharepoint strategy is almost as effective. Shall we mention ActiveSync and Exchange Server?

What a hilarious fellow.

It's a shame Jobs isn't well enough to do a competing monologue about how keenly Apple listens to their customers.

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