Microsoft chief now runs a different company than it was in 2000
Today, Steve Ballmer started his 12th year as chief executive officer of Microsoft and there could be no better pair of bookends to his tenure than the following two videos. The first is from a company event, I’m not sure of the year, in which Ballmer earned the nickname “Monkey Boy” by bounding onstage, dancing maniacally to Gloria Estefan’s “Get on Your Feet” and, while trying to catch his breath, shouted four words: “I! Love! This! Company!” The second is from a week ago, when Ballmer casually walked onstage atCES 2011 in Las Vegas and calmly said, “Good evening and welcome.”
While Ballmer certainly seems to have mellowed in the intervening years, his passion for and confidence in the company he runs have not diminished. But on this anniversary, his employees are split on how they feel about him. According to the latest results from Glassdoor.com Ballmer has an approval rating of 49 percent today, down from 52 percent when I wrote last July about about Glassdoor, which lets employees of various companies rank their CEOs’ popularity. Google’s Eric Schmidt enjoys an approval rating of 96 percent, Apple’s Steve Jobs, 97 percent and Oracle’s Larry Ellison 78 percent. Still, Ballmer’s 11 years at the helm puts him above average in CEO tenure, which according to this report, averages only 6.6. years.
Microsoft is certainly a different company than the one Ballmer began running on Jan. 13, 2000, particularly because it has significant competition that it did not have back then.
One of the first big events that happened on Ballmer’s watch was the ruling from a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on April 3, 2000, that Microsoft was an “abusive monopoly” in that, among other things, it bundled the Internet Explorer Web browser with the Windows operating system, squeezing Netscape out of the browser market. Today, while Windows remains the predominant PC operating system, alternatives such as Mac OS, Linux and the coming Google Chrome OS are available. And as computing is done less on PCs and more on mobile devices, Windows may be even less of a player against operating systems from Google, Blackberry and Apple. And as for Web browsers, customers can choose from Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Opera and Apple’s Safari, among others.
Five Windows operating systems have been introduced since Ballmer became CEO. After Windows 2000 and Windows ME, Windows XP launched on Oct. 25, 2001, and during its five year run, 400 million copies were sold. XP was followed by Vista in early 2007, which Ballmer probably wishes you would forget. Vista had so many problems with security, performance, digital rights management and battery life that there is an entire Wikipedia page devoted to “Criticism of Windows Vista.” Windows 7, launched in October 2009, turned out to be a great way to forget Vista. Widely praised and adopted, Windows 7 sold 240 million copies its first full year on the market and is now running on 20 percent of all the PCs connected to the Internet, Ballmer said at CES.
I’d be remiss in not mentioning the success of Xbox and Xbox Live also on Ballmer’s watch.
Still ahead for Ballmer is how he’ll manage Microsoft’s business in the cloud and in mobile. While declaring “We’re all in” in his March 2010 cloud address, Microsoft seemed late to the game, chasing companies like Google, Amazon, Rackspace and Salesforce in the various cloud market segments. And Microsoft also seems to be playing catch-up in mobile, introducing Windows Phone 7 in November 2010 after Apple, Google and RIM were already established players. As Ballmer begins year 12 in office, maybe he should consider how mellow he should be. With a 49 percent employee approval rating and challenges in the cloud and in mobile, maybe it’s time for the fired up “Monkey Boy” to make a return appearance.
