Microsoft
includes Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Bing, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Microsoft BASIC, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Surface, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Research and 5 more
235 statements across 22 episodes · 79 bullish · 28 bearish · 8 people on the record · first statement Oct 5, 2021 by Michael Mauboussin · said 2,324 times in 64 episodes since 2021 · across every show →
Mentions by year, the whole family
brought up most by Ben Gilbert (1015), David Rosenthal (995), Steve Ballmer (163), Ben Thompson (45), Brendan Eich (21), Jensen Huang (7), Emily Chang (7), David Senra (6)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 11 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- Vanguard: The communist capitalist who saved investors a trillion dollars (Audio) · Acquired
- Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- Ferrari: What happens when you staple a luxury brand to a sports team? (Audio) · Acquired
- The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 561 mentions in 10 episodes 56 per episode
- The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired
- Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired
- Google Part III: The AI Company. Google is amazingly well-positioned... will they win in AI? (Audio) · Acquired
- Epic Systems (MyChart) · Acquired
- Google Part I: Origins of Search. How the Best Business in Human History Happened (Audio) · Acquired
- TSMC · Acquired
- 10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) · Acquired
- Coca-Cola: The Complete History & Strategy (Audio) · Acquired
- 2 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 1,371 mentions in 10 episodes 137 per episode
- Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired
- Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired
- Meta (Audio) · Acquired
- Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg) · Acquired
- Starbucks (with Howard Schultz) · Acquired
- Renaissance Technologies (Audio) · Acquired
- Novo Nordisk (Ozempic) · Acquired
- The Mark Zuckerberg Interview · Acquired
- 2 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 88 mentions in 12 episodes 7 per episode
- Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023) (Audio) · Acquired
- Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming · Acquired
- NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang · Acquired
- Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) · Acquired
- Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi · Acquired
- Visa (Audio) · Acquired
- Nike (Audio) · Acquired
- Doug Demuro on Analyzing the Car Industry, Creator-Led Businesses, and Porsche Follow Up (Raw Video) · Acquired
- 4 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 276 mentions in 23 episodes 12 per episode
- Stratechery (with Ben Thompson) · Acquired
- Amazon Web Services · Acquired
- Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006) · Acquired
- Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022) · Acquired
- The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) · Acquired
- SONY (75 years of electronics history in 3 hours) · Acquired
- Benchmark Part I · Acquired
- Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- 15 more episodes that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 17 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More · Acquired
- Complexity Investing & Semiconductors with NZS Capital (Extended Cut) · Acquired
- Standard Oil Part II (Extended Cut) · Acquired
- Standard Oil Part I · Acquired
- Not Boring (with Packy McCormick) - Extended Cut · Acquired
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
Everything said about Microsoft, oldest first
Oct 5, 2021 neutral
Oct 5, 2021 neutral
Nov 3, 2021 bullish
NZS Capital: Microsoft and TSMC anchor resilient portfolio with ~10% turnover
“And so this would be a company like companies we own in the head of the portfolio, be someone like a Microsoft or a TSMC where we're not looking for like value stocks or kind of like cheap companies. We're looking for companies that are healthy growers that we…”
Nov 3, 2021 positive
Feb 15, 2022 negative
Eich: Microsoft was convicted for threatening Compaq over Netscape bundling
“They had the Windows Monopoly, but what they did in tying the browser to it and threatening Compaq with revocation of the Windows license if Compact Shift Netscape as the default browser was illegal, and they got convicted for it.”
Mar 7, 2022 positive
Mar 7, 2022 bullish
Xbox Game Pass generates $2 billion to $3 billion annually
“Microsoft is now up to eighteen million subscribers to Game Pass, which to your point, I think there's like a cheap version at 10 and then a more expensive version at 15. So every year as an annuity is generating two to three billion dollars on Game Pass.”
Mar 7, 2022 neutral
Mar 28, 2022 positive
Apr 20, 2022 neutral
Apr 20, 2022 bullish
NVIDIA and CUDA constitute a platform on par with Apple and Microsoft
“NVIDIA is a platform, in my mind, no doubt about it. CUDA and NVIDIA and general purpose computing on GPUs is a platform, so whatever, you know, all of the stew of powers that go into making that, that go into making Apple, Microsoft, you know, and the like, G…”
Apr 20, 2022 positive
Gilbert: Every tech company failed at in-car differentiation except Tesla
“Every technology company has had their fanciful attempt to try to create a meaningfully differentiated experience in the car, all have failed. You think about Microsoft and the Ford Sync. You think about CarPlay, kind of, maybe a little bit works. And the only…”
May 12, 2022 bullish
Aug 16, 2022 positive
Sep 6, 2022 neutral
Gilbert: Microsoft treats product management as marketing and program management as engineering
“Microsoft considers product management a marketing function. So it's owned in the marketing org and is much more go to market oriented, whereas Microsoft's program manager is in the engineering org. It's on the same comp ladder and same promotion ladder as eng…”
Sep 6, 2022 negative
Gilbert: Microsoft and Google initially missed the cloud wave via PaaS
“And the unfortunate thing for Microsoft and for Google, who really started at this platform as a service layer, was you basically didn't get the startups because you didn't have a mature platform yet that people were excited to build on and understood how to b…”
Sep 6, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022
Apr 26, 2023 bullish
Lasky: Cloud game streaming is now viable due to bandwidth and scale
“So with the new xCloud platform, and I was a pioneering investor in this with Gaikai back in the day, and it wasn't really economically viable, but now with scale and, Moore's law and all these other things we, and bandwidth improvements, we can now really do …”
Apr 26, 2023 neutral
Sep 6, 2023 neutral
Sep 6, 2023 bullish
Microsoft employs five times more people per market-cap dollar than Nvidia
“They have 26,000 employees, and that sounds like a big number, but for comparison, Microsoft, whose market cap is only twice as big, has 220,000. So that is five X the number of employees per dollar of market cap going on over at Microsoft”
Sep 6, 2023 bullish
Nvidia functions fundamentally as a platform company akin to Microsoft
“They do make semiconductors, and they do make data center gear, but really they are a platform company. The right analogy for NVIDIA also is Microsoft. They make the operating system. They make the programming environment. They make many of the applications.”
Sep 6, 2023 bullish
Jan 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apple's 1985 intellectual property license covered all future versions of Windows
“Apple does do a deal to license a lot of quote unquote their intellectual property, which of course came from Xerox, to Microsoft. Apple, I think, was under the impression that it was just for Windows one point oh, but the actual terms of the agreement are thi…”
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024
Software makers must target platform shifts rather than fight entrenched incumbents
“You kind of have to counter position. If one, two, three is the best spreadsheet out there for the current technology generation, you just can't compete with them. You need to wait for the next big leap forward in order to find a new competitive vector.”
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apple licensing Microsoft BASIC in 1977 was their first commercial deal
“And that's the first deal that happens between the companies. I mean, there's so many deals done both directions, commercial deals, equity deals, legal disputes in both directions. And this is the very first time that they do something together.”
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Microsoft IPO'd at a $750M market cap with $200M in revenue
“When Microsoft itself would go public a few years later in 1986, they actually go public the same week that they moved to the big campus in Redmond, where they are to this day. Their market cap at IPO is only seven hundred and fifty million dollars, despite ha…”
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 bullish
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 bullish
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Microsoft generated $16,000 in 1975 and $22,000 in 1976
“Microsoft does 16,000 dollars in revenue that year from their 30 dollars a pop the basics that are getting sold with the Altair, which is great, especially the first year that they're starting. And the next year in 1976, everybody's so excited about this new m…”
Apr 22, 2024 bullish
Microsoft was the first software firm to reach $10 billion in revenue
“Fiscal 95. So this is the 12 months ending in June before Windows 95 comes out. Microsoft did 5.9 billion dollars in revenue. Fiscal 96, they did 8.7. Fiscal 97, when Windows 95 is really going, they do twelve billion dollars in revenue. First software company…”
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024
Microsoft bought full rights to QDOS for $75,000
“Later on, before this all gets announced and the PC ships, Microsoft would pay Seattle computer products another 50,000 dollars for full rights to own 86 QDOS, sell and license it to anybody else indefinitely. So I believe the total amount of dollars that chan…”
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Microsoft's MITS contract required best efforts to commercialize BASIC
“And that clause is that MITS must use its best efforts to license, promote, And commercialize the basic broadly in the marketplace, and that any failure to do so by MITS would be grounds for termination of the contract by Microsoft.”
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Copying proven products delivers better risk-adjusted returns than being first
“So fundamentally what this does for you as a business is it just leads to better risk-adjusted returns. You already know what's going to work before you ship it. Like, you don't really take market risk. So you're not gonna be the first to the market with early…”
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Microsoft's MITS deal paid $30 per copy plus 50% sublicense revenue
“And the terms of the deal are Microsoft is to get 30 dollars for each copy of BASIC that MITS sells, plus 50% of the revenue that comes from These sub-licensing deals that MITS may or may not do with other companies who want to use the BASIC.”
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 positive
New tech generations shift value chain power from hardware to OS
“A new technology generation, when something becomes possible and opens up a new market, It enables a shift in the point of integration in a value chain. The old value chain of IBM, if you shipped the mainframe, you had all the power. But in this new world of P…”
Apr 22, 2024 bullish
Microsoft revenue jumped from $25M in 1982 to $98M in FY1984
“I believe that for calendar year, 1982, Microsoft's revenue was twenty five million dollars, and I think this must have been when they switched to fiscal year end and June 30th. So Microsoft's fiscal year end starting then and up through now is June 30th. So t…”
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024
IBM paid Microsoft a $430,000 fixed fee for DOS with no royalties
“IBM paid Microsoft 75,000 dollars for testing and consultation. 45,000 dollars for DOS. 45. And 310,000 dollars for an array of sixteen-bit language interpreters and compilers. So all told, bundled together, that is 430,000 dollars fixed that IBM paid Microsof…”
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Microsoft's 6,000-person Office team consistently hit three-year planned ship dates
“I did always think it was absolutely incredible when I was at Microsoft and we would ship a version of Office every three years, I worked on Office 15, that the entire 6000 person organization had a process in place where we could release to manufacturing, RTM…”
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Microsoft's copycat apps could not win without major platform shifts
“The Microsoft versions never actually won until there was a platform shift that they could take advantage of to beat the incumbent. Like, Microsoft wasn't gonna beat Lotus one, two, three until the graphical paradigm came along, and then Excel being graphical …”
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Microsoft's Altair BASIC was the first commercial software product ever sold
“This is the first time software has ever been sold. Other than the IBM accounting machinations to protect themselves from antitrust, which was just accounting, nobody had ever sold software before. This is the first time.”
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Microsoft announced Windows in 1983 prior to the Mac's launch
“Starting in 1983, they're like, we gotta Do our own graphical operating system, or at least user interface, and this is the origins of the Windows product, and they actually announced it in November of 1983 before the Mac ends up shipping, which their partner …”
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Document file formats created massive network effects before the internet
“The document formats are a huge network effect thing, even before the internet, even before organizations were networked and computers were networked outside of an organization. File formats. You're right. There's huge network economies to file formats.”
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024
Bill Gates personally absorbed 3.5% equity dilution to hire Steve Ballmer
“In fact, it created some tension with Paul Allen, where Bill asked Paul if they could go to five percent. Paul said sure, and then Bill actually offered him eight and a half percent, and Paul got upset, and Bill said, I'll eat the three and a half percent. It …”
Apr 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Microsoft's 1997 Office commitment and investment saved Apple from bankruptcy
“Which, by the way, saved Apple. The company would have been completely out of business because it was so existentially important to anyone using an Apple computer to use Office that if Office, you know, Microsoft decides, oh, we're gonna stop developing Office…”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Ben Gilbert: Windows Vista killed developer excitement for Microsoft platforms
“I also think this is the death of Microsoft as an interesting platform for developers. Who is writing Vista apps? The Win-Thirty-Two API as a potential target for my new, interesting, innovative application, it's just not a thing anymore.”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Microsoft navigates technological uncertainty by placing multiple exploratory bets
“You're already getting this picture of Microsoft's business strategy, which is until we know exactly what the future looks like, start placing bets that approximate
So that we're sort of in the mix, even though we don't know exactly what the future is.”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Initial Azure launch did not threaten Microsoft's Windows-centric model
“In its initial incarnation, Azure did not threaten The Windows-centric approach. If you remember, when Azure launched, it was Windows Azure, and it ran Windows Server, and it was Platform as a Service, and Microsoft in no way changed its tune on open source.”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Rosenthal: Microsoft's flat stock under Ballmer stemmed from failing to tell its narrative
“And I think what I realized a few minutes ago as we were talking is, this was the biggest failure of the company during this period. They did not tell their story, right? And so much of what we think of as the losses from this timeframe, and certainly everythi…”
Jul 22, 2024
Rosenthal: Majority of Microsoft leadership and Satya Nadella opposed Nokia acquisition
“At one point, as Satya talks about in the book, there's a straw poll taken of all the division heads, all the top leaders in the company, whether they're for or against the acquisition. The majority are against the acquisition. Satya is against the acquisition…”
Jul 22, 2024
Rosenthal: J Allard's 1994 memo coined Microsoft's 'embrace, extend, innovate' strategy
“In January, 1994, when a young Windows networking engineer named James Allard, or J as he goes by, writes a memo to Bill Gates and to the senior leadership At Microsoft entitled Windows, the next killer application for the internet. And in this memo, he points…”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Rosenthal: Ballmer declared Microsoft 'all in' on cloud at UW in 2010
“In 2010, Ray Ozzie actually leaves the company, but as he's doing, he and Steve roll Red Dog, by this point in time renamed Azure, back into the server and tools business, and the two of them go to the University of Washington, and Steve gives a speech at the …”
Jul 22, 2024
Rosenthal: FTC deadlocked 2-2 on Microsoft antitrust penalties in 1993
“So in July, 1993, the FTC commissioners vote on whether Microsoft is a monopoly that deserves further action and penalties, and they deadlock at two to two, which means essentially a win for Microsoft. No action would be taken against the company.”
Jul 22, 2024
Gilbert: Microsoft invested $240M in Facebook at $15B valuation in 2007
“So the terms of the deal are, in October, 2007, Microsoft invests two hundred and forty million dollars for 1.6% of Facebook. So for those trying to do the math at home, that is a fifteen billion dollar valuation on the deal. Microsoft will get the exclusive r…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Windows 8 touch interface was originally planned only for tablets
“What ended up happening was the original vision for the Windows eight touch thing that we're all talking about, these live tiles, that was supposed to only ship for tablets as it was originally dreamed up, and there was a version of Windows eight that did not …”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Windows 95's true significance was becoming the internet's launchpad
“But in retrospect, the thing that mattered about Windows 95 all these years later is that's the platform that everyone started using the Internet on. And everything that we talked about in the last episode, yeah, it's all important, but it's not nearly as impo…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024
Rosenthal: Appellate court permitted Microsoft to bundle IE into Windows in 1998
“Microsoft appeals Judge Jackson's order, and in early May, 1998, the appellate court rules that Microsoft can continue shipping Windows with IE bundled into it, and also continue to bundle any other features that they want as part of Windows, as long as it ben…”
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Google monetizes browser traffic better than Microsoft monetized software licenses
“Eventually, Google comes along and creates a browser. They also don't sell that browser, but they monetize all the traffic coming through that browser, and they do it way better than Microsoft does at monetizing selling licenses.”
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Judge Jackson Ordered Microsoft Broken Up Into Two Companies in June 2000
“On June seventh, 2000, Judge Jackson issues the final judgment in the case, and he rules that Microsoft did indeed abuse its monopoly power, and as a remedy for having done so, he orders that Microsoft be broken up. Into at least two separate companies. Separa…”
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Internet Explorer grew from 20% share in 1996 to near-total dominance by 2000
“And by the end of that year in 96, Internet Explorer passes 20% market share. 97 it passes 40% market share. 98 it passes 60% market share. And then by the year 2000, Internet Explorer basically has, for all intents and purposes, a hundred percent worldwide Br…”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Rosenthal: Windows 7 succeeded by being a reliable 'Toyota Camry' rather than ambitious
“Windows at this point in time didn't need technical vision. It was trying to be the Dodge Viper. That's what Longhorn was. It needed to be the Toyota Camry. And he comes in, and he makes Windows Seven the Toyota Camry of PC operating systems.”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Guaranteed backward compatibility matters far more to enterprise buyers than innovation
“The key to enterprise is backward compatibility. Saying, look, we don't necessarily need to promise you anything too groundbreaking. We need to meet your needs today and be the most cost efficient, you know, total cost of ownership driven system that meets you…”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Controlling enterprise directory services creates unmatched software bundle stickiness
“In doing all this research, it seemed to me that once a enterprise adopted Active Directory, They were gonna tip, and they were gonna buy the rest of the software, too, because whoever manages the source of truth for who are all the people and what are all the…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: US PC Household Penetration Grew From 10% in 1986 to 62% in 2003
“The US household penetration of personal computers, again, flashing back pre-IPO, was only eight percent. So that whole doubling year over year over year, By Microsoft's IPO, they still only got to around 10% of penetrating the U.S. By 1997, 13 years later, it…”
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Gates Promoted Mobile and Tablet Computing in 2001 Windows XP Launch
“One of which was Bill Gates was always talking about mobile computing, so much so that in the key slide in the Windows XP presentation, one of the big bullet points is mobile computing. All the way back in 2001, and Gates thought natural user interfaces was go…”
Jul 22, 2024
Rosenthal: 1994 Microsoft consent decree banned tying but allowed feature integration
“The next year, in July, 1994, Microsoft just settles with them, rather than going to trial. They're like, alright, look, we just wanna be done, we're gonna settle with you DOJ, we're gonna be done with the US federal government here, and in that settlement, th…”
Jul 22, 2024 bearish
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
DOJ Remedy Mandated Gates and Ballmer Work at Separate Breakup Entities
“Steve Ballmer had to work at one company, and Bill Gates had to work at the other. They could not work at the same company. Each of those two, after they picked their companies, had to divest all of their shares From the one that was not their employer, so the…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Rosenthal: Ballmer replaced Muglia despite Server & Tools making $12B and growing fast
“Bob was crushing it as Head of server and tools. Revenue was growing, I don't know, 30, 40% a year. It's a twelve billion dollar business. But the reason that Steve made the change was he said, we need a new leader who's going to come in and change this organi…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Rosenthal: Steve Ballmer called Vista the worst moment of his CEO tenure
“In that conversation that we had with Steve, where he, you know, made the comment about my acquisitions, my mistakes, we just lost money on the bad ones, the genesis of that conversation was about Vista. You know, he was reflecting, he said, that probably was …”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Gilbert: Microsoft would have missed mobile regardless of the DOJ antitrust case
“Even without the whole DOJ thing, Microsoft probably would have visted themselves. Microsoft almost certainly would have missed mobile because there's no chance they would have realized that the business model that Google had Meant that they were gonna win in …”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Acquisitions costing only idle cash should be evaluated like venture bets
“When it doesn't cost you focus or your best people or whatever the scarce resources are and it only costs you cash, then you should totally think about it as, am I willing to bet 2.3% of my company or whatever percent of the cash that I'm not getting any credi…”
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Gilbert: Microsoft shelved finished Office for iPad project in 2013
“And absolutely, 100% something that happened is all 200 of us worked for multiple years to get these things ready. We had a ship date. Well, we had what we thought was a ship date. Actually, what happened was we were told that actually we're gonna shelve it. A…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Popular belief that Nadella originated Azure is historically inaccurate
“As the general public is concerned, Steve Ballmer was obsessed with Windows. He built the enterprise business. He left. Satya Nadella came in and launched Azure, and Azure has been great. Like, not exactly. That's not really what happened.”
Jul 22, 2024
Gilbert: Microsoft offered $24B to acquire Facebook in 2007
“Microsoft puts an offer on the table. It's a very complex deal structure, but effectively what it does is it lets Facebook shareholders cash out over a long period of time as the company's value grew. So you're not taking all your money off the table today. An…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Rosenthal: Multi-year enterprise agreements were 40% of Microsoft's 2007 revenue
“By 2007, analysts estimated that 40%, four zero, of all of Microsoft's revenue, which I think was about fifty one billion dollars that year. So 40% of fifty one billion dollars Came from multi-year enterprise agreements.”
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Windows Mobile Permitted Handset Makers to Modify Operating System Code
“The handset makers could modify the code of Windows Mobile. So, when you bought a handset, first and foremost, you were trusting the product quality of the people at the handset maker, and they had several OS's that they could buy and effectively start from.”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Gilbert: 'Embrace and extend' removes product-market fit risk by adopting proven behaviors
“The embrace and extend thing is actually a brilliant business strategy. There's already a whole bunch of people who love this thing. We want to embrace that new behavior. There's sort of no product market fit risk because we can clearly already see it happenin…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024
Gilbert: Free ad-supported search makes 3x to 5x more per user than software
“If I could take seven billion people in the world and sell them Windows, or I can take seven billion people in the world and have them use my search engine for free and then make the money from the advertisers, I'm gonna make three to five X more money from th…”
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Gilbert: Microsoft killed new products because of Windows-centric DNA
“You look at Courier, you look at Kin in mobile, you look at all these things that they would let them get so far, and then they'd be like, ah, you guys don't get it. Windows is the center of everything, and if it doesn't make Windows look great or it competes …”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Gilbert: Windows Phone Lost When Verizon Backed Motorola Droid Over Microsoft
“I think the biggest moment when the door really shut is when Verizon freaked out after the Apple and AT&T deal and said, we need an answer, and they decided that answer was Droid, and they put like a gajillion dollars behind the Droid advertising campaign.”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Microsoft used its browser for defense, while Google used Chrome for offense
“Microsoft built a browser, had a bunch of share, and then kind of looked around and said, we don't really know what to do with it. I guess we'll use it for defense? And Google built a browser and said, we know exactly what to do with this, and they used it for…”
Sep 30, 2024 positive
Sep 30, 2024 bullish
Sep 30, 2024 positive
Oct 28, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Web applications enabled continuous shipping over multi-year software release cycles
“For the first time in history, you actually could. All these companies with big climbing, Microsoft would ship every three years with a service pack once a year. It's a whole new era where all you have to do is, you know, upload some new PHP code to the FTP se…”
Oct 28, 2024 positive
Oct 28, 2024
Oct 28, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Microsoft is the true strategic and operational comparison for Meta
“The real comp for this company is Microsoft. That was actually my next one. They do iterative product development. They put the first version out just to kind of get feedback and see how they need to rev it and get better for the future. The early days are cha…”
Oct 28, 2024 neutral
Oct 28, 2024
Oct 28, 2024
Oct 28, 2024 positive
Oct 28, 2024
Oct 28, 2024 neutral
Facebook Handled No Native Ad Targeting When Sheryl Sandberg Joined
“And when she comes on board, like you referenced this earlier, Ben, there's Basically no ad targeting that's happening natively on Facebook. Like there probably is targeting that's happening through the third party Microsoft advertising network, but none of th…”
Oct 28, 2024 neutral
Rosenthal: Microsoft pursued Facebook in 2007 after missing search to Google
“Microsoft, perhaps obvious now in retrospect to everybody, really just wants to buy the company. But Mark's, of course, not gonna do that after the whole Yahoo experience, etc. Microsoft is also happy, though, to just keep the partnership going and expand it, …”
Oct 28, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Zuckerberg's post-2016 leadership mirrors Gates staying through DOJ antitrust fallout
“Zuck, after all the 2016 election fallout, and the shift in public perception, and having to do all this testifying, Is like watching an alternate future for Microsoft where Bill Gates had decided to stay at the helm instead of leaving after the DOJ case.”
Apr 21, 2025 positive
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Ballmer: Satya Nadella volunteered to report to Qi Lu to recruit him
“God, there's a lot, and I don't know who throws the idea out at first. Maybe Satya. We should hire Chi, and I should work for him. So Harry, and Harry was all in. Harry worked for Satya, who worked for Chi. No. We flipped it around.”
Jun 2, 2025
Ballmer: Microsoft initially charged fixed fees before switching to per-unit licensing
“We didn't charge for the operating system on an ongoing basis. We charged for it one time. If you got a new version, we charged another time and we did the same thing for basic and everything else because At the time, you could think we were like a substitute …”
Jun 2, 2025 bullish
Ballmer: LA Clippers are far more secure than Microsoft stock
“No, that I do not own for financial purposes. And I will also tell you, unlike Microsoft, it cannot go to zero. Not a chance. It is far more secure than Microsoft. Why? They're not making more of them. And as long as anybody in the world's getting richer, the …”
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Ballmer: Clippers Will Use Microsoft-Style Long-Term Grinding to Challenge Lakers
“Our goal is to be long-term grinders on that. And we want to beat them every time on the court. It's okay to have two popular teams. Los Angeles County, for gosh sakes, has the same number of people as the state of Ohio, pretty much. So there's plenty of peopl…”
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Ballmer: Microsoft explored acquiring HTC years before buying Nokia
“I'd been trying to buy a hard, I had talked about buying a phone company for years, a number of years before the Nokia deal. I forget what year it was. I flew to Taiwan and we were looking at buying HTC. They were the biggest Windows phone OEM at the time. Nok…”
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Ballmer: Azure started as PaaS to prioritize Windows developers
“We say we're going to build platform as a service because it's a Windows platform. Infrastructure as a service, a little bit if you think about it, you're sort of by nature accepting everybody's infrastructure. It's by nature, multi quote, multi-platform. You …”
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Ballmer: One of my major regrets is Microsoft losing its consumer muscle
“One of my regrets is we lost the consumer muscle along the way, because I think the ability to be ultra ultra, I mean, we're a great company, Microsoft's great company, but to have both of those muscles totally firing, if I'd been able to sustain that consumer…”
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Ballmer: Microsoft Office was the foundation for entering enterprise markets
“The truth of the matter is Microsoft office slash M three 65, whatever exactly it's called today is super important. It was the foundation for having permission to be in the enterprise. And yet it's a product that sits right there in front of users.”
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Ballmer: Microsoft's upgrade model threatened to cut company revenue in half
“We were selling upgrades and new licenses. And upgrades were, I can't, less than half the price of new licenses. So what does that mean? The company was headed to a world where its revenue was half of its existing revenue.”
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Ballmer: Microsoft's mindset of doing all software was an unfocused mistake
“We've got to do all the software that these things will ever need. I mean, it was still of the mindset that said, and that there's an arrogance to that, and there's a hunger to that. That says there's just nothing we shouldn't do. And I don't think that was a …”
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Ballmer: Nokia partnership failed without acquisition due to marketing funding economics
“The problem with the partnership with Nokia is they didn't have the money to invest in marketing. We did. We did. They didn't have the market to go. They did not have the ability to go deep pockets. We did. But if we didn't have the monetization capability bac…”
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Ballmer: Microsoft entered search in 2003 with zero native capability
“And we jumped in in 2003, I think we pushed. Now, you'd say five years is a lot, or you could say five years isn't that much. You could say we had no birthright. I mean, it's just a completely separate thing. We had no capability. We had nobody who'd grown up …”
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025
Ballmer: Microsoft's first antitrust inquiry came from FTC over IBM collusion
“This was our first antitrust problem. I don't know if you guys know this, is the FTC at the time thought we and IBM were working to divide the market because we had done some positioning. What's windows good for? What's always too good for? We and IBM had done…”
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Jun 30, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025
Aug 26, 2025 negative
Google+ Was the Company's Equivalent to Microsoft's Disastrous Windows Vista
“This was Google's Windows Longhorn slash Windows Vista. In our Microsoft saga, we talked about how Vista slash Longhorn was the most damaging thing to the company because of the distraction and the siphoning of resources and the best talent away from working o…”
Aug 26, 2025 bearish
Aug 26, 2025 neutral
Aug 26, 2025
Aug 26, 2025 neutral
Microsoft's Productivity Segment Generated $120 Billion Versus Google Cloud's $50 Billion
“Microsoft's Productivity and business process segment, which is mostly office. I think LinkedIn is now part of this too. Last year generated over a hundred and twenty billion dollars in revenue. Google reports Workspace as part of the cloud segment. So all of …”
Aug 26, 2025 bearish
Aug 26, 2025 neutral
Aug 26, 2025
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 positive
Aug 26, 2025 negative
Jerry Yang Rejecting Microsoft's 2008 Yahoo Bid Was a Historic Blunder
“In one of the worst corporate decisions of all time, because just two years later,
Bing, after Microsoft would launch Bing the next year in June of 2009, Bing would take over powering Yahoo search for a deal that paid Yahoo one billion dollars.”
Aug 26, 2025 neutral
Oct 6, 2025 neutral
Oct 6, 2025 neutral
Oct 6, 2025 neutral
Microsoft's $1B Deal Spurred OpenAI's Captive For-Profit Restructuring
“And while they're there, they hash out a deal for Microsoft to invest one billion dollars into OpenAI in a combination of both cash and Azure cloud credits. And in return, Microsoft will get access to OpenAI's technology, get an exclusive license to OpenAI's t…”