Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

Re:Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months by rdl on Friday August 23, 2013 @09:32AM (#6263417)

Positives: Only threw away 10-20b on pointless acquisitions (aQ, etc.). Successfully avoided buying Nokia, or pulling an HP/Compaq Fiorina fiasco, and didn't buy a big dying services organization to chase IBM. Also didn't do like HP's board with the lawsuits and revolving door CEOs and such. Avoided major criminal activity.

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Re:Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months by derefr on Friday August 23, 2013 @10:12AM (#6263695)

This should sound like a ridiculous set of "positives", but it doesn't. Instead, I'm thinking--when you put it that way, Ballmer certainly wasn't the worst they could have done. Not by far.

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Re:Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months by devx on Friday August 23, 2013 @11:58AM (#6264379)

How about paying $8 billion for Skype, a zero-profit company, and almost paying $40 billion for Yahoo?

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Re:Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months by lotso on Friday August 23, 2013 @04:48PM (#6266172)

Skype is about to pull in 2 billion in revenue. Surely there's some profit there.

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Re:Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months by sbuk on Saturday August 24, 2013 @02:01PM (#6269296)

I'm pretty sure Skype was strategic. Lync as a unified communications platform is all the more interesting because of it.

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Re:Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months by seanmcdirmid on Friday August 23, 2013 @10:45AM (#6263895)

Got lucky on yahoo.

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Re:Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months by gnoway on Friday August 23, 2013 @10:29AM (#6263797)

"Avoided being caught and held responsible for major criminal activity."

I suspect this is a more true statement.

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