EightBlack.

A few weeks ago, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO gave a speech to some Standford students. I would have liked to be in the audience.

He called Google “a one-hit wonder, mocked Google’s personal time concept and called their growth expectations insane.”

Is it because that Microsoft (or Ballmer) really doesn’t know how to deal with competition that they resort to insecure and shallow comments like this? I just hate corporate arrogance, especially from Microsoft.

Sol Trujillo from Telstra gave an equally idiotic remark when a journo asked him about Google and he responded with “Google, Schmoogle”. But do not get me started on my thoughts on Sensis the search platform.

Like many of you, I’ve been a customer of Microsoft’s for a long time, have had to put up with their software’s nuances (if you could call them that), have also been a supplier to Microsoft in a past life and know past and existing MS employees. Exposure to their people and products have given me an opinion. Steve Kendall (MS Aus) and Jeff Raikes (US) are both great people.

What’s wrong with saying, You know, we know Google is the poster child of our industry right now. Good on them. Microsoft has just turned 30 and weve just released Windows Vista globally. We’re also re-positioning the company to better serve our customers. True we have a challenge with hiring and retention, but which well established technology company doesnt?

For the first 10 years of Microsoft’s life, we were the juggernaut. Now we’re more like a mature adult with the benefit of 30 years of experience.

Or something like that.

I know I feel blessed to work in our industry. And I worry every day that we’re not doing enough for our clients, not pushing the boundaries enough and not learning quickly enough. If you want, call it healthy paranoia.

We’re in a pitch for a large automotive client at the moment. We lack certain skills to be able to handle the entire project, so all we did is find someone who could. And we partnered with them. They weren’t invited to bid, but we were and my pragmatic view of the world is some of the pie is better than none at all. And besides, the partner we chose makes us look good.

You contrast the Steve Ballmer talk with this recent interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google courtesy Wired Magazine. Schmidt doesnt berate Microsoft, he doesnt criticise their leadership and he doesnt talk about their strong hold over the business market.

I strongly believe that Google will challenge Microsoft’s bread and butter with Apps.

And when that day comes, I intend to be in the audience when Schmidt delivers that speech.

PS. I’ll be posting live from the Web 2.0 Summit as of this weekend where Eric Schmidt is one of the keynote speakers. It promises to be a exceptional event. Stay tuned.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 7:18 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.