Microsoft, every mention

The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired Jun 2, 2025 · 100 mentions

• ▶ 1:12:59 Ben Gilbert It seems like until Android took off, Microsoft actually did have an opening to become the second mobile.
• ▶ 1:14:09 Steve Ballmer It was hard to say, Hey, we're going to learn and fix, you know, would Microsoft, you know, I don't know where we would have gone with things, uh, on phone if I had stuck around, but I probably would have stayed at it.
• ▶ 1:14:28 Ben Gilbert Like a Microsoft hardware.
• ▶ 1:15:41 Steve Ballmer I don't know.
• ▶ 1:16:10 Steve Ballmer I mean, that's what we, that's what I did with surface.
• ▶ 1:17:02 Steve Ballmer And I said, we got to go do surface.
• ▶ 1:17:34 Ben Gilbert Not inside of Microsoft.
• ▶ 1:17:42 Ben Gilbert There's another one with Azure.
• ▶ 1:17:45 Ben Gilbert Can you tell us the story of how Azure really got started?
• ▶ 1:18:27 Steve Ballmer We've been doing that with Windows server and SQL server.
• ▶ 1:18:42 Steve Ballmer I really want to give you my sense of what Microsoft's businesses are and, but we didn't have a platform.
• ▶ 1:19:03 Ben Gilbert He's still writing code at Microsoft.
• ▶ 1:19:05 Steve Ballmer He's still writing code at Microsoft.
• ▶ 1:19:38 Steve Ballmer Uh, but anyway, so I get Cutler and there's a guy working in MSR who I think is underutilized to this guy, Amitabh.
• ▶ 1:19:56 Steve Ballmer I think Bill, is Bill still with the company?
• ▶ 1:20:21 Steve Ballmer so I get Cutler and Amitabh to go do this thing, and then Cutler brings some of his, I'll call gang, his favorite guys, he brings them over, because he's a magnet for talent, and we get started, and we made an explicit decision, and I…
• ▶ 1:20:44 Steve Ballmer We say we're going to build platform as a service because it's a Windows platform.
• ▶ 1:21:07 Ben Gilbert It doesn't leverage Microsoft's strength of owning the Windows franchise.
• ▶ 1:21:07 Ben Gilbert It doesn't leverage Microsoft's strength of owning the Windows franchise.
• ▶ 1:21:50 Steve Ballmer Unix had a strong developer group, and on the front end, Windows was definitely stronger.
• ▶ 1:22:17 Ben Gilbert Uh, Windows apps were coming out that would sweep the world and go get a hundred million users because they were great apps.
• ▶ 1:23:07 Steve Ballmer But I'm also saying there was a, a Windows.
• ▶ 1:23:10 Steve Ballmer There was still a great Windows sort of, uh, developer ecosystem.
• ▶ 1:23:24 Steve Ballmer And of course we're trying to make windows strong and we're trying to get to the cloud.
• ▶ 1:23:28 Steve Ballmer And then we're learning more things about the cloud from both exchange in the cloud and Azure in the cloud.
• ▶ 1:24:29 Steve Ballmer Uh, and, uh, you know, by the time I leave, we have some, some, some momentum with Azure, but some momentum.
• ▶ 1:24:46 David Rosenthal It really struck me as you were describing the challenges around with a big company like Microsoft and attacking wildly different vectors like mobile, like search, like hardware.
• ▶ 1:24:58 David Rosenthal Azure was that.
• ▶ 1:26:54 Ben Gilbert Going back to the core initial start of Azure, I find it very interesting that Microsoft had a business called Server and Tools Business, and that is not where Azure started.
• ▶ 1:26:54 Ben Gilbert Going back to the core initial start of Azure, I find it very interesting that Microsoft had a business called Server and Tools Business, and that is not where Azure started.
• ▶ 1:27:05 Ben Gilbert Azure started as a incubation by Ray Ozzy with a completely separate team than your existing, like, actual product group selling server and tools.
• ▶ 1:27:20 Steve Ballmer I mean, Windows and Windows NT were in different groups, too.
• ▶ 1:27:35 Steve Ballmer I mean, you could say it's part of the issue with Windows when we tried to use Windows on things for which we probably should have started.
• ▶ 1:27:46 Steve Ballmer We did break it out, but we constrained it with Windows.
• ▶ 1:27:49 Steve Ballmer We broke Windows NT out and constrained it with Windows.
• ▶ 1:27:54 Steve Ballmer It worked fine because Windows belong.
• ▶ 1:28:41 Ben Gilbert If this is 2006, that is seven, eight years before you left Microsoft.
• ▶ 1:28:52 Steve Ballmer We'd been working on Azure for eight years.
• ▶ 1:31:31 Steve Ballmer You know, IBM was a one trick pony, Microsoft two to two and a half tricks.
• ▶ 1:31:42 Steve Ballmer I'm going to call the desktop business, which I include windows and office.
• ▶ 1:31:42 Steve Ballmer I'm going to call the desktop business, which I include windows and office.
• ▶ 1:31:57 Steve Ballmer And I knew they could die, but they're two tricks, two different revenue models, two different licensing models, essentially different sales motions, the, even the way Microsoft sells those stuff.
• ▶ 1:32:21 Steve Ballmer You need an AD account, an Exchange account, it's exact, Windows.
• ▶ 1:32:26 Steve Ballmer This is what M.
• ▶ 1:32:26 Steve Ballmer Three 65 and Azure.
• ▶ 1:32:26 Steve Ballmer Three 65, you could call the two, the modern translation of those two things are the Windows OEM business in M.
• ▶ 1:32:44 Ben Gilbert I feel like we had a conversation at one point where we both kind of landed in, ah, unclear how profitable that business is for Microsoft relative to other.
• ▶ 1:32:56 Steve Ballmer I mean, look, I would say, I would say Microsoft is optimistic it'll be a full-on trick.
• ▶ 1:33:58 Steve Ballmer It's kind of like us adding things to Office and redoing the EA and
• ▶ 1:35:44 Steve Ballmer Microsoft, both of those were Microsoft big businesses.
• ▶ 1:35:52 Steve Ballmer Or office
• ▶ 1:36:17 Ben Gilbert I think Google was making more money off of a PC user than Microsoft was, because their business model generated more search revenue.
• ▶ 1:36:56 Steve Ballmer We put Office on the Mac by then.
• ▶ 1:37:27 Steve Ballmer We thought of it as underneath the windows trick, if you will.
• ▶ 1:38:00 David Rosenthal I think this makes sense because Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world with two, so if anybody had three...
• ▶ 1:44:22 David Rosenthal I didn't realize that Microsoft started that.
• ▶ 1:52:09 Steve Ballmer I mean, she'll talk about balance, and I would say, we're gonna win with surface.
• ▶ 1:52:49 Steve Ballmer So you get all these things, narrative,
• ▶ 1:58:20 Steve Ballmer We did, you know, surface was a big disagreement.
• ▶ 1:58:32 David Rosenthal What about Azure?
• ▶ 1:58:34 Steve Ballmer Bill was fine with Azure.
• ▶ 1:59:26 Steve Ballmer And partly it was the centrality of Windows and the notion that Windows would say central, therefore people would all want this new stuff.
• ▶ 1:59:50 Steve Ballmer Just not calling it Windows.
• ▶ 2:00:09 Steve Ballmer But by then, you know, we were a little cocky about Windows, and it was our thing.
• ▶ 2:02:01 Steve Ballmer That's cloud, uh, that's surface, that's some of the improvements in windows.
• ▶ 2:02:01 Steve Ballmer That's cloud, uh, that's surface, that's some of the improvements in windows.
• ▶ 2:02:12 Steve Ballmer Bing, that's when we hire, I think that's when we hire Chi Lu.
• ▶ 2:02:16 Steve Ballmer Chi Lu is, do you guys know the story of Chi Lu at Microsoft?
• ▶ 2:02:21 Steve Ballmer Chi Lu is one of the most pivotal, pivotal things at Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:02:40 Steve Ballmer And Chi, I think, went to graduate school with Harry Shum, who had been in Microsoft Research, and Harry was now working on Search, and he was working for Satya, who was running Bing.
• ▶ 2:02:40 Steve Ballmer And Chi, I think, went to graduate school with Harry Shum, who had been in Microsoft Research, and Harry was now working on Search, and he was working for Satya, who was running Bing.
• ▶ 2:02:56 Ben Gilbert Oh, Satya, the guy who was running Bing.
• ▶ 2:02:58 Steve Ballmer He was running Bing.
• ▶ 2:04:11 David Rosenthal So then what did, what did he do at Microsoft that made him so impactful?
• ▶ 2:07:35 David Rosenthal That's why Azure was turbocharging.
• ▶ 2:09:48 Ben Gilbert We want to talk a little bit about your post-Microsoft term, but let's sort of leave Microsoft with a final question of why did you resign?
• ▶ 2:12:12 Steve Ballmer It had been, it had helped build Microsoft, but that didn't mean it had always been easy for him or me.
• ▶ 2:14:53 Steve Ballmer Revenue, I, I don't really pay much attention to Microsoft's revenue.
• ▶ 2:18:28 David Rosenthal You're still the largest individual shareholder in Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:19:17 Steve Ballmer We're going to know everything about this company.
• ▶ 2:21:34 Steve Ballmer Charts what's going on financially at Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:21:53 Ben Gilbert So she effectively made a Microsoft stock pick.
• ▶ 2:23:21 Ben Gilbert But your net worth is ballooning every year way faster than you can give money away because of the Microsoft hold.
• ▶ 2:23:28 Steve Ballmer Yeah, and one other thing that, yeah, Microsoft hold, but you may be missing one thing on the Microsoft hold that's important, and that's the size of the dividend check.
• ▶ 2:23:41 Steve Ballmer Between Microsoft and the other stuff I own, the dividend checks are pretty close to what we give away.
• ▶ 2:24:08 Steve Ballmer And number two, uh, I do have stuff that's not in Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:24:19 Steve Ballmer I have one business I invested in with a guy who I went to college with who worked at Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:25:42 Steve Ballmer Will Microsoft underperform the index by enough to write capital gains taxes?
• ▶ 2:26:10 Steve Ballmer So we have left less to give to philanthropy someday, unless I really think Microsoft's gonna underperform the market by essentially the capital gains rate.
• ▶ 2:27:26 Steve Ballmer You know, I'm wondering why you held onto your Microsoft stock when your partners over there didn't.
• ▶ 2:28:01 Steve Ballmer You know, Microsoft goes to zero.
• ▶ 2:28:04 Steve Ballmer But even if Microsoft goes to zero, me and my family, we can live, we can give away money.
• ▶ 2:29:55 Steve Ballmer And I will also tell you, unlike Microsoft, it cannot go to zero.
• ▶ 2:30:06 Steve Ballmer It is far more secure than Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:32:22 Steve Ballmer Uh, the business is just like Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:33:12 Steve Ballmer I never did that when I was at Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:33:47 David Rosenthal Microsoft, your domain is always growing.
• ▶ 2:34:24 Steve Ballmer It's not like Microsoft where I felt like I could always find a job that somebody should want.
• ▶ 2:38:07 Steve Ballmer In Microsoft, I, we got rid of the value called teamwork.
• ▶ 2:39:38 Steve Ballmer See, I learned some things that would have been very helpful for me to understand at Microsoft.