Ballmer Isn’t Microsoft’s Only Problem

Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer announced that he would be leaving the company he helped found within a year:

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer shocked the technology world on Friday by announcing he would step down within 12 months, punctuating a tenure marked by the software giant’s declining dominance and struggles to keep pace with its competitors.

In a statement, Microsoft said Ballmer would retire “upon the completion of a process to choose his successor. In the meantime, Ballmer will continue as CEO and will lead Microsoft through the next steps of its transformation to a devices and services company that empowers people for the activities they value most.”

Market scrutiny will now likely shift to who will be tapped to succeed Ballmer. Despite that uncertainty, investors applauded the news by sending Microsoft’s shares surging by more than 7 percent — adding a whopping $24 billion to the software company’s market capitalization from Thursday’s close.

The business pages are now full of articles on how and why Ballmer failed. I think that most of these articles are too short-sighted.

IMO Microsoft’s problems go far beyond Steve Ballmer and started much earlier than 2000. I think they go back to the hiring of Dave Cutler and other members of the VAX VMS development team back in 1988 and the mindset that made that look like the right move for Microsoft. It goes back to the roots of Microsoft’s hegemony on the desktop.

Microsoft began as part of the small computer revolution, a revolution that wanted to put computing power in the hands of everybody. The decision to ally itself with corporate IT departments and put the real power there not only lead to Microsoft’s becoming the biggest software company in the world. It made the company constitutionally incapable of seeing the developments that would, ultimately, put it into its present zombie state.

It missed the Internet but was quickly able to make what might well be the most complete course correction in the history of American business. Since then its domination of the desktop has lead directly to the worldwide mass adoption of smartphones and tablet computers not to mention the transmogrification of malware from a minor and avoidable nuisance into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Microsoft’s latest grand vision for computing, as embodied in Windows 8, seems to be to impose all of the shortcomings of smartphone and tablet computing on desktops and notebooks. Suiting computing experience to use has never been one of Microsoft’s strong points. Diversity is a strength rather than a weakness but it is difficult to get a man or a company to understand something when his salary or its business plan depend upon their not understanding it.