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Steve Ballmer Admits Microsoft’s biggest Mistake

tgdaily.com — During his address at the Executives Club Chicago, Steve Ballmer opened himself up to a little question and answer session in which I am sure he now regrets. The crowd went completely silent and you could almost hear a pin drop when he was asked: “If you could have one do-over what would it be.”

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 19, 2009

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  • pathouston22, on 06/19/2009, -9/+197" assumed he would avoid the obvious issues that many, including myself were thinking: Vista, Search, Monopolizing the industry, among many others."

    wtf? Why would you want to do-over the monopolizing of an industry? Last time I checked, controlling 90% of an industry is good for business?
  • MacroDaemon, on 06/19/2009, -9/+124He gave a good and simple answer, and not a very controversial one in my opinion.
    I don't see why he should regret that.
  • inactive, on 06/19/2009, -4/+104"This site is temporarily unavailable.
    Please notify the System Administrator"

    Somebody, please notify the System Administrator!
  • trendygamer, on 06/19/2009, -1/+67Microsoft Bob?
  • Drahkir, on 06/19/2009, -3/+67It takes less time to hack than OSX? How is that a selling point for Vista?
  • w3ber, on 06/19/2009, -0/+51don't bother he's playing unreal tournament
  • missourimobile, on 06/19/2009, -5/+54I would have said Windows ME... Vista is fine as long as you got newer hardware... Windows ME however was trashier than Madonna in the early 90s...
  • hhlodesign, on 06/19/2009, -16/+64"HAHAHAAH!!! FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS? FULLY SUBSIDIZED? WITH A PLAN? THAT IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE PHONE IN THE WORLD, and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard. Which makes it not a very good email machine."

    Who's laughing now, jackass!
  • acknotSW, on 06/19/2009, -0/+46A friend of mine who worked for microsoft gave me a free pre release copy of ME and I never forgave him for it.
  • greenanator, on 06/19/2009, -26/+70That's definitely NOT Microsoft's biggest mistake
  • Sherman901, on 06/19/2009, -2/+37Yeah, I think you dropped the ball on that last part.
  • thrashertm, on 06/19/2009, -2/+37Not sure about Microsoft, but this is Balmer's biggest mistake - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MuZDlVWh8I
  • dalittle, on 06/19/2009, -16/+51As someone who has actually used Vista I could not dis-agree with you more. Vista has horrible UI and performance issues. It suffers from bloat, poor execution, and a bunch of DRM initiatives that have no benefit to me.
  • MrZop, on 06/19/2009, -23/+57I love all these people that attack vista. Vista is a great OS. Sure, at first it sucked, but hey, even your beloved XP sucked when it launched.

    If you think vista is there biggest mistake, you must not have used ME when it launched.
  • Kral, on 06/19/2009, -4/+36Developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers developers
  • Bermygoon, on 06/19/2009, -1/+30
    And bing gets another mention in the press for free...Damm MS is good at marketing!
  • MarkusX, on 06/18/2009, -47/+75Steve Ballmer, honest? hmmm....

    Search is just a failed venture. I think he was just trying to promote bing by saying that. If he really admitted the biggest mistake for MS, he should have said Vista. That was a desaster in their home court - operating systems - where they ought to be strong.
  • johndavidjack, on 06/19/2009, -0/+27Dugg for ridiculous analogy.
  • smotpoker, on 06/19/2009, -2/+28"That is not MS's court or their fault."

    Some vendors and developers might disagree. Some say it was a buggy driver API and poor specs/docs from MS that caused crappy drivers. Plus there was little incentive for many vendors to produce new drivers for old hardware instead of let customers buy new hardware from them which also qualified as a 'driver problem' to many.

    Also, stuff like this didn't help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_ ...
  • w3ber, on 06/19/2009, -1/+24we feel pretty today, don't we?
  • inkswamp, on 06/19/2009, -4/+26Look, I'm no fan of Steve Ballmer, but he was right about that. He made those comments prior to the iPhone's release. At the time, nobody knew what the final feature set of the iPhone was and nobody knew how well the soft keyboard concept would work.

    And in case you forgot, Apple validated his primary criticism about the price with a significant and very controversial price cut a month after release.
  • jbird32275, on 06/19/2009, -4/+24Let's start a list. I'll get it started:

    1. I wish we would have realized this internet thing would catch on.
  • Choobie, on 06/18/2009, -4/+24What are you talking about? I wasn't logged into anything and it brought up the article without asking.
  • dullnation, on 06/19/2009, -8/+27From their perspective, it is (profit wise)... maybe not from the consumers perspective though.
  • inactive, on 06/19/2009, -6/+25No its not you moron. It illegal to use that position to prevent other business to compete with you but it is within your right to get as much market as possible.
  • inactive, on 06/19/2009, -0/+19Hey stop insulting Madonna like that!
  • lincolnparkx, on 06/19/2009, -4/+22Wow another another Bing story on the frontpage. stop please.
  • Rudegar, on 06/19/2009, -15/+334. ballmer
    3. vista
    2. windows me
    1. ms bob
    0. ms network as a challenger of the internet
  • sonicEd, on 06/19/2009, -0/+17It's actually a question he has answered (this way) many times.
  • ninjakitty07, on 06/19/2009, -1/+18Dugg for taking the time to count nineteen exclamation points.
  • krisrm, on 06/19/2009, -0/+162. I wish we hadn't been so drunk when we came up with the idea of "Clippy" the Office assistant.
  • puppyoneb, on 06/19/2009, -4/+19DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!! DEVELOPERS!!! DEVELOPERS... *quick breath* ... DEVELOPERS!!!
  • krisrm, on 06/19/2009, -1/+16That explains that weird error I got the other day:

    "FATAL ERROR AT... YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM IS JEWISH. IF THE PROBLEM PROCEEDS..."
  • inactive, on 06/19/2009, -1/+16Yes. I support this analogy.
  • gcnaddict, on 06/19/2009, -1/+16Dugg for 19 exclamation points without a single '1', "one", or tilde.

    Buried for 19 exclamation points.
  • flipdoubt, on 06/19/2009, -0/+14I hear ya... I swear if I get one more JSOD...

  • SpartanA24, on 06/19/2009, -1/+14Best. Analogy. Ever
  • DarkShroud, on 06/19/2009, -24/+37I remember trying to using MS search back in the day. They really didn't have any idea what they were doing. It got better slowly over time and I have to say Bing is pretty good.
  • brundlefly76, on 06/19/2009, -9/+21Vista had two very specific serious issues: lack of solid third-party video drivers and the file transfer issue.
    The file transfer bug was simply inexcusable.

    Both were fixed by the time the first service pack rolled out.

    Everything else about Vista was common grumblings with a new OS.

    After SP1 all the noise was just haters.
  • stevedyun, on 06/19/2009, -2/+14We need a mirror!
  • Nephersir7, on 06/19/2009, -15/+26GTFO my digg, Asstralknight.
  • Balanced, on 06/19/2009, -1/+12If you mean the 'good' hacker, then how is a UNIX-like system* with easy command line access and lots of open-source components somehow less hackable than a proprietary kernel?

    * At least one version of Mac OS X went through the certification process and can truly be said to be a 'UNIX' but I don'tt hink they've bothered to keep this up.
  • 47f0, on 06/19/2009, -1/+11I'd have to agree - ME was the gift that kept on giving. Other mistakes were not getting serious about security much sooner than they did, and focusing on hijacking web protocols rather than on WWW compatibility.

    But, seriously - all Ballmer did here was use this as an opportunity to push their new search effort. It wasn't an honest answer, it was just a marketing opportunity.
  • digginamish, on 06/19/2009, -3/+13I've been giving Bing a chance and they do have some nice features in there. I don't think they've surpassed Google in my mind, but they're closer than I thought they would be.

    And I also enjoy their daily image. The hotspot thing is a little goofy, but I look forward to it every day.
  • Meursault, on 06/19/2009, -2/+12It's probably a tough one for him to answer as there are so many to choose from. A better question, which of your zillions of initiatives over the years has actually panned out? Windows Live? Zune? Bob? UMPC? The miss rate is even more damning considering the leverage the company has.

  • JustLetGo, on 06/19/2009, -8/+18You're doing it wrong.
  • moliver21, on 06/19/2009, -3/+13I'm pretty sure using the "windows registry" for the backbone of their operating systems was their biggest mistake.
  • Schmich, on 06/19/2009, -0/+10Holy sh....just wow.
  • nicodemus26, on 06/19/2009, -1/+11Yup! The article pops up with no issues for me. Dugg for being on one page.

    Here's the full text:
    "
    You are not authorised to view this resource.
    You need to login.
    "
  • johnkemp, on 06/19/2009, -0/+10*throws a chair!*
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