Palantir Posted May 21, 2013 Share Posted May 21, 2013 Don Mattrick looks like Lionel Messi. LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 ballmer dodged a bullett when Jerry Yang turned down $30. But he didn't dodge this one. http://bgr.com/2013/05/23/skype-market-share-whatsapp-kik/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest valueInv Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 ballmer dodged a bullett when Jerry Yang turned down $30. But he didn't dodge this one. http://bgr.com/2013/05/23/skype-market-share-whatsapp-kik/ Google's loss is even bigger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 ballmer dodged a bullett when Jerry Yang turned down $30. But he didn't dodge this one. http://bgr.com/2013/05/23/skype-market-share-whatsapp-kik/ Why? 8B is not really a huge deal for MSFT, especially when it's offshore cash. Acquisitions are CapX and are just part of this industry's economics.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 ballmer dodged a bullett when Jerry Yang turned down $30. But he didn't dodge this one. http://bgr.com/2013/05/23/skype-market-share-whatsapp-kik/ Why? 8B is not really a huge deal for MSFT, especially when it's offshore cash. Acquisitions are CapX and are just part of this industry's economics.... lol. $8b is a big deal. Maybe not in SillyCON valley where that may be chicken scratch. But I asssure you that it's a big deal to Owners of businesses, like David Einhorn. go ask David how he likes 8 $large being flushed down the toilet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 ballmer dodged a bullett when Jerry Yang turned down $30. But he didn't dodge this one. http://bgr.com/2013/05/23/skype-market-share-whatsapp-kik/ Google's loss is even bigger. not really. they got tons of great patents and a hardware division, and cable modems, which they sold for cash. lots of their losses were non cash. The skype deal was pawned off to MSFT by Mark Andreesen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest valueInv Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 ballmer dodged a bullett when Jerry Yang turned down $30. But he didn't dodge this one. http://bgr.com/2013/05/23/skype-market-share-whatsapp-kik/ Google's loss is even bigger. not really. they got tons of great patents and a hardware division, and cable modems, which they sold for cash. lots of their losses were non cash. The skype deal was pawned off to MSFT by Mark Andreesen. I meant messaging marketshare loss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 I meant messaging marketshare loss. good point. they dropped the ball on google talk. let google voice just sit there. and they are late with Hangouts, which still is not competitive with the best messaging applications. But they did not drop $8b on their messaging product. :) I actually think hangouts is going to take share from skype at this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 ballmer dodged a bullett when Jerry Yang turned down $30. But he didn't dodge this one. http://bgr.com/2013/05/23/skype-market-share-whatsapp-kik/ Why? 8B is not really a huge deal for MSFT, especially when it's offshore cash. Acquisitions are CapX and are just part of this industry's economics.... lol. $8b is a big deal. Maybe not in SillyCON valley where that may be chicken scratch. But I asssure you that it's a big deal to Owners of businesses, like David Einhorn. go ask David how he likes 8 $large being flushed down the toilet. Nobody cares about David Einhorn or what he thinks. He is outside his circle of competence when he talks about technology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 Nobody cares about David Einhorn or what he thinks. He is outside his circle of competence when he talks about technology. maybe people who think throwing $8b of shareholder capital down the drain is Aok don't care what he thinks. but people who care about shareholder value creation certainly do. because he knows how it's created. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 Oh please, what great technology business has David Einhorn run? What's his value creation record there? The guy has no clue about this stuff and is limited to "pay me a dividend and I'll go away". Ballmer on the other hand has to actually think about the long term health of the company he spent his life building, and if he feels Skype is strategically integral to that, then that's his right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest valueInv Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 Oh please, what great technology business has David Einhorn run? What's his value creation record there? The guy has no clue about this stuff and is limited to "pay me a dividend and I'll go away". Ballmer on the other hand has to actually think about the long term health of the company he spent his life building, and if he feels Skype is strategically integral to that, then that's his right. Don't start again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 Oh please, what great technology business has David Einhorn run? What's his value creation record there? The guy has no clue about this stuff and is limited to "pay me a dividend and I'll go away". Ballmer on the other hand has to actually think about the long term health of the company he spent his life building, and if he feels Skype is strategically integral to that, then that's his right. Ballmer destroys value with his capital allocation. einhorn creates value with his. it's that simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 Einhorn has absolutely no clue about technology or running a large technology firm or investing in one. It's that simple. Furthermore, given that he had a critical role in building MSFT, Ballmer has created far more value than Einhorn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 Einhorn has absolutely no clue about technology or running a large technology firm or investing in one. It's that simple. Einhorn didn't want to buy yahoo at $30+ and he didn't pay $8b for skype which earns nothing. Ballmer wanted to buy Yahoo in the middle of a depression for $30+ (he was saved by someone more clueless about the value of yahoo than he was), and he was sold skype by Mark Andreesen who said I want $8b for this company that earnings Nothing. And ballmer wrote him a check. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 Yahoo may have greater value to a strategic. They need an online presence after they screwed up MSN. Building one costs a lot of money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcliu Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 It's easy to trash Ballmer, but if you look at MSFT's earnings from when he started to today, it's grown significantly. Although that said, it could just be that MSFT is a great business. Still, you're giving Einhorn way too much credit and Ballmer way too little. Most of Google X' projects earn nothing either, doesn't mean it's worth nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wachtwoord Posted May 23, 2013 Share Posted May 23, 2013 They say a truly great business could be run by a board of monkeys and be successful :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmukul Posted May 24, 2013 Share Posted May 24, 2013 It's easy to trash Ballmer, but if you look at MSFT's earnings from when he started to today, it's grown significantly. Although that said, it could just be that MSFT is a great business. Still, you're giving Einhorn way too much credit and Ballmer way too little. Most of Google X' projects earn nothing either, doesn't mean it's worth nothing. That's true, but if you look at Microsoft mistakes in the past they had been huge and also pretty stupid ones, I think ballmer had a big hand in that. For example yahoo and adquantive. Also big misses and stupidity like windows mobile has been the oldest mobile os but it is yet to succeed. Surface etc has been bad I would attribute the good things like consistent earnings to the nature of business which ballmer has influence on but not much and for the mistakes there is no one to blame but Microsoft executive. Microsoft always had a huge opportunities to capitalize on in the past which they failed. they could have done simple things like ad supported software which ios and android and now Microsoft is following still in a crappy way. I think web grew to where it is because Microsoft screwed up and google didn't, if they had done ad supported software earlier and done it good, this board will be a windows app and not a website, I think in the very long term Microsoft will make money and it might require an active board or something else which will come with time but unless these kind of things happen its better to invest in Berkshire or Fairfax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hyten1 Posted May 24, 2013 Share Posted May 24, 2013 i think people need to step back and give people some credit and let things play out (its easy to criticize with HINDSIGHT) msft miss the iphone is it because msft (Ballmer) are dumb or incompetent or is it because apple are better at that moment, there is a difference (pretty much the entire world miss it except for apple). I guess in my opinion people are expecting too much, even from msft. look at the history of MSFT, what we see now is pretty much the msft tradition, name one thing they did they didn't do after the fact. I am not critizing them, i am saying the current msft is not much different than past msft. they usually come after the fact (windows, word, excel, , office, xbox, bing, sql server etc etc.) i mean if you read msft financials, their revenue/profit growth without knowing its msft, everyone would be saying this is a great company. sure you can argue "despit ballmer msft did well" i mean this is the nature of the beast, a tech company. look at the history of appl. there are tons of up and downs. no tech company can be at the fore front of every new thing (if you think they can you need to adjust your thinking, not even the almightly appl and goog). But as long as they recognize their error and adjust as quickly as possible. from what i know msft is pretty good at adjusting. now maybe someone would of done better (who?) than ballmer, but then again maybe not. this is just my humble opinion. EDIT: ad supported software? i'll bet googles rev/proft from so call ad supported software are minimum. also like i said as long as the company adjust quickly, have you seen the latest office (its both cloud base and has ads). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted May 24, 2013 Share Posted May 24, 2013 It's easy to trash Ballmer, but if you look at MSFT's earnings from when he started to today, it's grown significantly. Although that said, it could just be that MSFT is a great business. Still, you're giving Einhorn way too much credit and Ballmer way too little. Most of Google X' projects earn nothing either, doesn't mean it's worth nothing. I think it's a little of both with Ballmer, and that's why it seems people love him or hate him. He's actually done very well on the financial side by buying back shares and paying a regular dividend with the enormous cash flows at Microsoft, but he's done very poorly on the acquisition side and paying that one time special dividend, as well as some of his goofy frat-boy antics. I don't think what he's done has been a great success, but he's sort of kept Microsoft still there. It's very possible that any of a handful of wonderful CEO's out there could have done a far better job if they had been given a chance...Jeff Imelt comes to mind. You could probably throw any major Berkshire CEO in there and they would have done a better job. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hyten1 Posted May 24, 2013 Share Posted May 24, 2013 people mention the bad acquisition, sure i'll give you that but is that really the reason why people are down/criticize msft? i don't think so. the acquisition are the side show. sure msft lost a few billion due to acquisition, but that is not why people criticize msft. its some how missing search, tablets, apps, cloud etc. to that i agree somewhat, but to that i also say msft is adjusting and adjusting pretty quickly. It's easy to trash Ballmer, but if you look at MSFT's earnings from when he started to today, it's grown significantly. Although that said, it could just be that MSFT is a great business. Still, you're giving Einhorn way too much credit and Ballmer way too little. Most of Google X' projects earn nothing either, doesn't mean it's worth nothing. I think it's a little of both with Ballmer, and that's why it seems people love him or hate him. He's actually done very well on the financial side by buying back shares and paying a regular dividend with the enormous cash flows at Microsoft, but he's done very poorly on the acquisition side and paying that one time special dividend, as well as some of his goofy frat-boy antics. I don't think what he's done has been a great success, but he's sort of kept Microsoft still there. It's very possible that any of a handful of wonderful CEO's out there could have done a far better job if they had been given a chance...Jeff Imelt comes to mind. You could probably throw any major Berkshire CEO in there and they would have done a better job. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted May 24, 2013 Share Posted May 24, 2013 A lot of these misses happened under Bill Gates, but he always escapes blame. Everybody knows that Ballmer became CEO in 2000, however he is not a product guy, Bill Gates continued to have authority over product for many many years after stepping down from CEO. Things like phones, tablets, web Microsoft had for many years before Apple. Steve Jobs himself recounts where he got the idea for the iPad - from a Microsoftengineer at a barbecue who was working on something similar (Bill Gates was very proud of this project). Under Bill Gates, the management philosophy was all about making Windows central, and anything that didn't prioritize Windows got the axe (For example, how Brad Silverberg was shut down after he proposed doing web-based software 12-13 years ago, today we think that is going to kill MSFT, but they looked at it over a decade ago), and they killed tons of promising projects. Furthermore, Bill Gates had absolutely no clue how to monetize the Web. No getting around that. Ballmer has been undoing these mistakes and has been transforming this company ridiculously. People talk about phones and tablets and yadda yadda, but nobody talks about how dominant MSFT is in the enterprise software market, how S&T has been seeing excellent growth (iCloud runs on Azure btw), or the remarkable design shift that has happened in the company's products. Could you imagine Metro interface under Gates? LOL If it wasn't apparent, I'm pro-Ballmer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted May 24, 2013 Share Posted May 24, 2013 You could probably throw any major Berkshire CEO in there and they would have done a better job. I highly doubt any major Berkshire CEO could have done better. It is extremely difficult to take a giant tech company that is dependent on one product and is sensitive to technological change, and suddenly shift it to capture every emerging technology that comes up while remaining extremely profitable AND maintain your consumer base...What MSFT is doing is going to be better than IBM's little elephant dance, in large part because MS will never hit the same dire straits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest valueInv Posted May 24, 2013 Share Posted May 24, 2013 A lot of these misses happened under Bill Gates, but he always escapes blame. Everybody knows that Ballmer became CEO in 2000, however he is not a product guy, Bill Gates continued to have authority over product for many many years after stepping down from CEO. Things like phones, tablets, web Microsoft had for many years before Apple. Steve Jobs himself recounts where he got the idea for the iPad - from a Microsoftengineer at a barbecue who was working on something similar (Bill Gates was very proud of this project). Under Bill Gates, the management philosophy was all about making Windows central, and anything that didn't prioritize Windows got the axe (For example, how Brad Silverberg was shut down after he proposed doing web-based software 12-13 years ago, today we think that is going to kill MSFT, but they looked at it over a decade ago), and they killed tons of promising projects. Furthermore, Bill Gates had absolutely no clue how to monetize the Web. No getting around that. Ballmer has been undoing these mistakes and has been transforming this company ridiculously. People talk about phones and tablets and yadda yadda, but nobody talks about how dominant MSFT is in the enterprise software market, how S&T has been seeing excellent growth (iCloud runs on Azure btw), or the remarkable design shift that has happened in the company's products. Could you imagine Metro interface under Gates? LOL If it wasn't apparent, I'm pro-Ballmer. That would certainly explain iCould's problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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