Well we have a good working relationship with Microsoft at the development level. But let’s not kid ourselves, this is a company with enormous resources and talented people, and there is a certain pride that comes along with that for them and for us.
Microsoft has a monopoly over the desktop operating systems.
I remember, once I was stressed, with an upcoming paper deadline. That little Microsoft Word clippy guy would show up in my face, jumping around and asking if I needed help. It had no understanding of my emotions and had zero empathy. That got me interested in this idea of tech being responsive to our emotions.
There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.
One of the ways that Microsoft beat Apple way back in the day was that they were a lot more open; today, in the world I come from, the free software and open-source world, Microsoft is not generally viewed as open; they’re viewed as proprietary.
The useful part of Microsoft was that everything worked together.
At Microsoft, we’re aspiring to have a living, learning culture with a growth mindset that allows us to learn from ourselves and our customers. These are the key attributes of the new culture at Microsoft, and I feel great about how it seems to be resonating and how it’s seen as empowering.
A lot of people think, and Microsoft is happy to let them think, that all great things are invented by Microsoft. In fact, very, very little has been invented by Microsoft.
As you know, Microsoft eventually kind of grabbed the gold ring out of Apple’s hands, I guess.
I do believe that at Microsoft in general good work is rewarded, and I have seen it many times here.
Microsoft, Apple, Facebook all bought huge patent portfolios to further their strategic game. They’re doing what I’m doing!
The Web is not a prize to be won, and Mr. Ballmer’s attitude is deplorable in the light of what the Web means to the world, to users, to designers and developers, and – to put it into Microsoft parlance – customers.
I thought Microsoft did a lot of things that were good and right building parts of the browser into the operating system. Then I thought it out and came up with reasons why it was a monopoly.
Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft.
What drew me to this job is that Univision is a brand unlike any other in all of media. Univision has the highest brand affinity of any brand, and that includes Microsoft and Apple and some of the iconic brands in all of industry.
No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.
When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.
So, what you can do in Microsoft Word is what Bill Gates has decided. What you can do in Oracle Database is what Larry Ellison and his crew have decided.
I don’t think there is any franchise more powerful than ours around securing the consumer experience and we will not concede that to anyone including Microsoft.
I want everyone inside of Microsoft to take that responsibility. This is not about top-line growth. This is not about bottom-line growth. This is about us individually having a growth mindset.
I was worried Microsoft would take my music. But ultimately I talked to the lawyers and I still own it.
Microsoft has no SQL Server developers. We have only Azure developers.
When I started at Microsoft, I was lucky enough to be part of the rise of the client-server paradigm.
IBM has research and development; so do Microsoft and Nike and even Jose Andres. But there hasn’t been enough R&D on feeding people in the Third World. This has to be part of the process; if not, we’ll keep throwing money at the problem instead of investing in true solutions.
It is impossible to count the blessings I have received over my years at Microsoft. I am humbled by the professionalism and generosity of everyone I have had the good fortune to work with at this awesome company.
I think few people in their lifetime have the chance to be involved in something like the creation of Microsoft – that’s always going to be something I’m known for.
By turning every Yahoo search box into a Bing box, Microsoft may have bought itself the exposure it needs to be the next Google.
At Microsoft, the magic of software is used to take on very interesting challenges.
Phones remain a critical component of the Microsoft device portfolio and an important piece of our mobility strategy, but a restructuring is in order.
Microsoft wasn’t born as an enterprise company. We have always been growing with end users in mind.
I’m just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell.
I enthuse about Scrivener to all of my friends. Some of them even listen to me and download it. This is often swiftly followed by an email complaining that it’s all very confusing, and they’ll stick to Microsoft Word, thanks.
The reason why Apple computers have worked so well over time is that, unlike Microsoft, they don’t bend over backward to be compatible with every piece of hardware or software in the digital universe. To code or create for Apple, you follow Apple’s rules. If you’re even allowed to.
I think that everyone in Seattle, their daily existence, is enriched by all the charitable giving that is courtesy of Microsoft.
The vision, determination, stamina, hope, relentlessness, and sheer work that are involved in staying afloat, much less succeeding, are the same whether you are running a window on 47th Street or Miramax Films or Microsoft.
There’s an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.
At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.
The opportunity to build new and surprising partnerships to help Microsoft succeed in a mobile-first, cloud-first world is truly exciting, and I look forward to leading these efforts.
Jazz musicians don’t make any money, so I might as well make some on the market. I pick my own stocks – Microsoft, Dell – the tech stocks, the breadwinners.
To align with our new strategy to enhance the Windows device ecosystem, we are integrating Microsoft Mobile Device Sales (MMDS) underneath the Consumer Channels Group (CCG).
Entrepreneurs always pitch their idea as ‘the X of Y’, so this is going to be ‘the Microsoft of food.’ And yet disruptive innovations usually don’t have that character. Most of the time, if something seems like a good idea, it probably isn’t.
There are some things that money can’t buy: peace of mind, for starters, and lean muscle mass. Neither the Queen of England nor the founder of Microsoft can put in an order for either one.
Today, we have our own concentrations of economic power. Instead of Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, the Union Pacific Railroad, and J. P. Morgan and Company, we have Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus’ success in the spreadsheet – basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
One thing I’ve always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they’ll tell you, ‘We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.’
A big part of the success of Microsoft was that every year, the chips our software ran on got faster and cheaper. They doubled in capability every 18 months under Moore’s law.
When I walk into a Best Buy, I now see, right from the front door, a giant Apple logo. I see a giant Samsung logo. I see a giant Microsoft Windows logo. And those are stores within a store.
It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’
We don’t spend our days thinking about Microsoft or trying to get revenge on Microsoft. That’s a really negative and backward way, and that’s not how I want to live.
If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Wal-Mart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
I don’t try to be a threat to MicroSoft, mainly because I don’t really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows-the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.
Microsoft isn’t evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
There’s more at risk in what happens in Microsoft than I could ever bet on a poker table.
A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That’s a $100 billion industry. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave me $20 million in startup funding to go after that market.
Companies such as Microsoft, Cisco and Intel were just starting at their 10-year anniversary.
When Gates was active in business, he was the smartest – so focused that no company could surpass Microsoft.
Seattle was hardly a tech magnet before Amazon, Microsoft, and then a host of once-fledgling technology firms set up operations there.
I think reconceptualizing Microsoft as a devices and services company is absolutely what our vision is all about. Office 365 and Azure on the services side are representative of it.
