The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 235 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Ballmer: Bill Gates and I did not speak for a year after I became CEO
“I think it was basically from sometime in about March or April of 2000 to 2001. I mean, literally we weren't speaking. I didn't know what it meant to be his boss and he didn't know what it meant to work for me.”
Microsoft Would Have Won Mobile OS Licensing Without Google Buying Android
“If they don't buy Android and they don't get started basically in the month that they did, this market belongs to Microsoft.”
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 …”
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…”
Ballmer: Microsoft only truly missed mobile devices and search
“So in the sense that we missed a major productivity area and we're in the productivity business and we were in the client Area, and we missed a client device. Those are the two. Nothing else we met, quote, missed.”
Ballmer: Gates strongly disagreed with Microsoft making Surface, phones, and HoloLens
“Disagreed about whether we should do hardware. That was a big one. We did, you know, surface was a big disagreement. Phone, big disagreement. HoloLens. Big disagreement.”
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…”
Ballmer: Microsoft's mistake was forcing Windows into unnatural form factors
“I don't think we stuck with windows too long. I think what we did is we tried to put windows in places that it didn't naturally go, and we tried to be too windowsy, both in the API and the UI in some things.”
Ballmer: Microsoft removed 'teamwork' as an official corporate value
“In Microsoft, I, we got rid of the value called teamwork. I didn't want that one. I said open and respectful and dedicated to making others better. Because teamwork could sound like a treat everybody, nice, nice.”
Ballmer: Longhorn was Microsoft's 'mistake of mistakes'
“Longhorn was a big mistake. I have to take accountability. I was a CEO. Bill's got to take a lot of accountability. And it was the mistake of mistakes.”
Ballmer: Microsoft wasn't seen as an enterprise company until late 2000s
“It was the late 2000. You know, certainly it wasn't before 2005. It wasn't the beginning of my tenure. We were still trying to prove that we were an enterprise company.”
Gilbert: Microsoft is the only Big Tech giant without federal antitrust probe
“The only one that's not under active antitrust investigation today by the federal government.”
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…”
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 …”
Gilbert: Xbox is culturally significant but insignificant to Microsoft's business
“Xbox has become an important part of our world. But not an important part of Microsoft's business.”
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…”
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.”
The Microsoft-IBM PC partnership was tech history's most important deal
“I think you can make a very strong argument, the single most important deal ever done in the history of technology.”
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…”
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 …”
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.”
Lasky: Microsoft's Activision deal mimics Netflix's exclusive content strategy
“And you look at the Activision deal, sixty-nine billion dollar acquisition of Activision. It's basically like, you know, Netflix or Apple or one of these other companies buying exclusive content.”
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…”
Microsoft will not make Activision games Xbox exclusive following the acquisition
“People are worried about with the Activision deal about whether Microsoft would make Activision's games exclusive on Xbox. I don't think they will.”
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…”
ChatGPT Surprise Was Worth It if Google Avoids Antitrust Breakup
“As flat-footed as Google was when ChatGPT happened, if the outcome of this is they avoid a Microsoft-level distraction and damage to their business from a U.S. Federal court monopoly judgment, worth it.”
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.”
Alphabet generates more net income than any other U.S. company
“Google, and I should say Alphabet today, generates more net income or profit than any other U.S. Company. More than Apple, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, JPMorgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway.”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
Ballmer: Verizon Chose Android Because Microsoft Missed Product Window
“Look, they would've taken our stuff cause they could put pressure back on the manufacturers, but we didn't have the stuff they wanted at the right time. They went Android.”
Ballmer: Office backend hit cloud infrastructure scale before Azure did
“The office three, what's now M three, 65, the office backend, because that got critical mass as a cloud infrastructure before Azure did.”
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 …”
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…”
Ballmer: Microsoft was the first major company to replace options with RSUs
“And we transition then from stock options to stock awards. Which, if you notice, I think we were the first to make that as a major transition, but everybody's made the same transition.”
Mark Zuckerberg Turned Down a $24 Billion Acquisition Offer From Microsoft
“Less than two years later, he turned down twenty four billion and that they were really good for the money. It's Microsoft.”
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.”
Gilbert: Competing with your own distribution channel quickly kills your business
“If your distribution decides to compete with you, and decides to make that a priority, your business is over in a minute.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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 …”
Rosenthal: For mega-cap tech, talent and focus are scarce, not capital
“Money is not the scarce resource. The scarce resource is time and talent and focus.”
The iPhone Broke Microsoft's Enterprise Lock-In Through BYOD
“All of the huge advantages in lock-in that Microsoft had built up, the iPhone changed that calculus because the iPhone kicked off shadow IT and bring your own device, and it kicked off the user revolt against IT.”
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…”