Microsoft was actually highly successful under Ballmer. Just not in terms of image or in the consumer-facing world.

They made a lot of money, but were not successful. Business software companies become irrelevant decades before their revenues go away (eg IBM). Microsoft lost its future relevance under Ballmer.

Ballmer may have hurt microsoft, but they are still alive and well. The truth of it is that for a lot of things they do, there just isn't a competitor, nor will one arise soon. No one is replacing excel. As for windows -- there are a couple of niches where mac or linux could step in, but for most of them, that just isn't an option. Azure, typescript, vscode, ms office, office 365 are massively successful.

Sure, MS is alive and well and may outlast every other tech giant today (except probably Amazon). But that doesn't make Ballmer a good CEO.

I never said he was, just that he didn't sacrifice their future relevancy.

No. Microsoft's market cap remained steady during a 10 year boom that gave rise to most of the dominant players in the tech industry.

https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/08/23/the-steve-ballmer...

It's a big company and hard to blame an individual for mistakes. But they totally missed out on being the mobile OS of the future under him. And they ended up getting a late, slow start to cloud computing (minus SAAS).

They lost their market leading position in not just mobile, but also browsers and consumer operating systems.

They might have made money under Ballmer, but he was also responsible for Windows 8, Windows Phone and restricting open source within the company.