Ballmer throws chair at Gartner; throws bone to Yahoo!
- TAGS:Microsoft, MSFT, Steve Ballmer, Windows 7, YHOO
- IT TOPICS:Desktop Apps, Internet, Operating Systems, Windows
In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Ballmer fight his corner on Windows 7 and Microsoft's Yahoo! bid. Not to mention Take On Me (quite literally)...
Gregg Keizer reports:
Windows 7 will be like Windows Vista, but more so, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer said today as he defended the first two years of Vista and claimed its successor will be a major release
...
Ballmer was responding to a question from Gartner's Neil MacDonald, who asked how Microsoft would walk the line between doing too much with Windows 7 -- thus, risking the kind of compatibility problems that plagued Vista early in its career -- and too little, which might give customers an excuse to pass on the upgrade.
...
[He] also took exception to the idea that Windows 7 will be a minor release or a spit polish on Vista ... The major-minor release question has plagued Microsoft since shortly after Vista was released, when company executives seemed to say that it planned to update its operating system on an alternating basis, with the major updates -- what Vista was to XP, for example -- every four years, with minor updates in between.
Preston Gralla adds:
You can be sure plenty of Microsoft folks are wishing they could put a muzzle on Steve Ballmer today, as the Microsoft CEO told the audience at a Gartner Symposium that they should feel free to skip Vista and wait for Windows 7 ... You could probably hear the Windows folks groan all the way across the continent in Redmond.Microsoft has been in essence forced to continue selling Windows XP because people simply aren't upgrading to Vista ... it seems as if Microsoft has given up on Vista. This latest statement by Ballmer seems to back that up.
...
And he intimated that the Microsoft buyout of Yahoo might still be on the table, despite evidence to the contrary. Microsoft spokespeople were forced to backtrack after Ballmer's statement.
Joseph Tartakoff charts the news:
At just around noon today on the East Coast, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at a conference that buying Yahoo still would make sense."We offered $33 bucks (for Yahoo) and it's $11 today," Ballmer said. "It's clear Yahoo didn't want to sell. They probably still think it's worth more than $33 a share. I still think it makes sense for their shareholders and ours."
And with that, Yahoo's stock was no longer valued at $11 ... up more than 11 percent at $13.05.
John Paczkowski peeks; and pokes fun:
That remark spiked Yahoo’s shares as much as 17 percent, though there are no talks between the two companies at the moment and Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell recently described Yahoo as a “declining asset” and the chances of Microsoft acquiring it outright as “negligible.”
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With Yahoo’s stock trading at a 52-week low ... how could Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer fail to comment on the discrepancy between the company’s current share price and the spurned $33-a-share bid Microsoft made for Yahoo earlier this year?
Henry Blodget muses:
Our take ... is that Steve Ballmer just inadvertently revealed HIS OWN attitude toward a Yahoo deal, not Microsoft's official one. But given that Steve is Microsoft's CEO, it's his own attitude that matters.
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Steve Ballmer just reopened negotiations ... What price does Steve have in mind? $20 would probably do it.
And finally...
- Take On Me: Literal Video Version [excuse me while I dust off my DX7]
Buffer overflow:
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
Previously in IT Blogwatch:
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