Ballmer Says Amazon Isn't a "Real Business" 283
theodp writes According to Steve Ballmer, Amazon.com is not a real business. "They make no money," Ballmer said on the Charlie Rose Show. "In my world, you're not a real business until you make some money. I have a hard time with businesses that don't make money at some point." Ballmer's comments come as Amazon posted a $437 million loss for the third quarter, disappointing Wall Street. "If you are worth $150 billion," Ballmer added, "eventually somebody thinks you're going to make $15 billion pre-tax. They make about zero, and there's a big gap between zero and 15." Fired-up as ever, LA Clippers owner Ballmer's diss comes after fellow NBA owner Mark Cuban similarly slammed IBM, saying Big Blue is no longer a tech company (Robert X. Cringely seems to concur). "Today, they [IBM] specialize in financial engineering," Cuban told CNBC after IBM posted another disappointing quarter. "They're no longer a tech company, they are an amalgamation of different companies that they are trying to arb[itrage] on Wall Street, and I'm not a fan of that at all."
IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only computer-related business I can think of with more R&D budget is Microsoft, IBM isn't a tech company? Shut your mouth. Then again, if Cringely says it, it's probably wrong.
Amazon is clearly a business. But its model is Microsoftian EEE. Sure, you can sell through Amazon, but they keep stats and if it becomes worth it to stock what you're selling, they're going to do that. Of course, on eBay, if the Chinese see you sell a lot of what they've got, they'll start selling it directly. Then you only get to sell to people who care about shipping time and support.
Amazon is a real business, but their business model basically requires that they shut everyone else down, and not everyone wants to shop with Amazon. So they'll eventually fail if they don't find a new model.
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You might be missing the side of Amazon's business that is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) cloud providers.
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The reports are that the cloud provider part of the business is losing stunning amounts of money.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reports are that the cloud provider part of the business is losing stunning amounts of money.
Only because they're trying to corner the market
right, but just like retail, it's not clear that this is possible,
overall the company seems sustainable, it can afford to make losses like the one last quarter in part because it can easily reverse those losses if it ever becomes a serious problem
It's not clear that it can. Amazon's model depends on endless growth, but you can't grow forever.
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That presumes the model they're using this year will be the one they use two years from now.
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No, we can be pretty sure that this will be the model for the next 2 years. Probably for the next 5 to 10.
Amazon has one of the lowest Return of Investments (ROI) in the S&P 500.
It has one of the highest Price to Earnings ratio (P/E) in the S&P.
The only way this makes sense is if Amazon is trading growth for profits today for bigger profits tomorrow. Depending on what model you use, you get 5 to 10 years. Combine that with the public statements of Bezos, and I doubt it is 2 years.
Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer's grandstanding. I'm pretty sure he understands the numbers in Amazon's 10-K filings.
Amazon made $745 million in income from $74 billion in sales last year, for a net income of $274 million.
That even seems understated, because they're obviously spending way more to expand their capacity than they need for just supporting their current operations. Last year, they have a net cash flow of $5.5 billion from operations, then spent $ 3.4 billion on purchases of property, equipment and software. Even after spending that much geared towards growth, that still leaves $2 billion in free cash flow to spend.
Let me put it another way, Amazon's net worth (assets minus liabilities) has gone from $17 Billion in 2010, to $23 Billion, then $27 Billion, now $33 Billion end of 2013. You don't do that without being profitable each year along the way, regardless of what they decide to do with the profit, which is clearly currently to reinvest the cash in order to expand quickly and grab as much market share as they can.
Ballmer's just jealous that no matter what Microsoft does or who they purchase, they can't convert their windows/office cash cows into a worthy reinvestment, because they're essentially out of new ideas, having mostly missed the ground floor of the Internet revolutions. So Microsoft's best bet is to act like a mature company and pay dividends so their stockholders can use that money to invest in something like Amazon.
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Capitalism's model depends on endless growth.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Growth per-capita is another way to say "standard of living". That which provides growth given the same resources is called "technology".
Technological improvement is increased standard of living from the same resources. Capitalism's model depends on endless technological improvement, and thus endlessly funds technological improvement, resulting in continued improvement in standard of living.
Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since most of the loss comes from reinvesting revenue, at any point they could theoritically stop investing so much and turn a profit. They just choose not to.
So in theory at least, they should be fine.
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Perhaps - but that's exactly why Ballmer's trying to dis them. The only business Amazon is in that Microsoft wants to be in is cloud hosting services. And for now, Amazon's beating them. I don't know whether Amazon makes any money off of their cloud or not. They're spending everything they take in on expansion (and perks like free shipping) - but is that expansion of warehousing facilities, or is it the build-out of their data centers? Either way, Amazon cloud hosting could be a moneymaker. Their onli
Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's generally how Amazon operates. Lose money to establish a dominant market position, then start working out how to make that profitable. People used to comment that their business was to lose money on each sale, but make up for it in volume. It was a facetious comment, but with a grain of truth: Amazon couldn't afford to sell books the way that they did until they were selling enough that they could own a lot of distribution infrastructure and amortise the costs.
Ballmer isn't in any place to complain. The XBox and Zune followed the same model when he was MS CEO. It didn't work so well for the Zune, but the XBox spent years losing money before it had a sufficiently large market share to be profitable.
Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon isn't 'losing money' - Just take a look at it's top-line growth vs capital expenditure.
Amazon is re-invest revenue instead of distributing back to stakeholders, or keeping cash in the bank. Cash in the bank is seen as waste. Instead, cash re-invested is being leveraged to create accelerated future growth.
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It is easy to post growing sales if your profits are zero. The hard part is to have a growing business that actually makes money on each sales. Every time they seem to have gained traction on a market (like books) they seem to negate it by offering incentives such as Amazon prime. T
hey have yet to prove that they can sell products at operating costs+3% on an ongoing basis.
Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're missing the point. Amazon is making a profit, but it's not distributing it to investors, which is what gets flagged as "profit" by finance. Instead they are re-investing profit into more and more expansion.
If they were to stop the aggressive expansion, they could likely post a decent profit. But they choose not to.
Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me be the Devil's advocate.
First, Amazon is not "re-investing profit into more and more expansion." Amazon has one of the worse Return on Investment (ROI) in the S&P. That is, it has below average profits on its investments. What it is doing is exchanging profits for growth. It is a subtle but importance difference.
You are right, Amazon could be today's profits for bigger future profits. That is the general consensus among stock analyst. Which is why Amazon's stock price tends to flop around so much. Stock analyst have to guess what Amazon's profits will be in 10 years, which is shrouded in risk and uncertainty.
However there is a contra view. That Amazon is stuck in low margin business that will never generate large profits. That the only way to expand is to offer lower prices than anybody else, resulting in a "Red Queen's Race", where everybody has to run faster just to stay where they are. If that is true, Amazon will never be able to generate "normal" profits, so future profits will be small, not large.
Only time will tell on who is right.
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But amazon's entire point is to have small profits from tremendously huge turnover.
Because there are two way to make a lot of money. Sell a few products with huge profit on each, or sell a huge amount of products with little profit on each.
Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Informative)
But last quarter's loss was big, too big. That is why the stock suddenly took a hit.
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AFAIK, the xbox still isn't profitable as a program.
Microsoft entertainment division may or may not have paid off its investment yet but Xbox is profitable year-by-year now. That's one area in which Microsoft has executed well, RROD and Xbox 180 aside.
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Don't worry, they'll make it up in volume.
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Hard to know. Amazon is hitting $1b / quarter. They are spending about $4.59 billion / yr in infrastructure costs. They have some OpEx. They are obviously pricing their service way too low if they have to maintain that level of CapEx. But it is unclear that when the market calms down they will.
Amazon is simply too opaque about everything. As long as they can easily raise money based on sales growth we'll never know how profitable any of that is.
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so?
S3 - competes with akamai, and azure - cloud services
fire/kindle- compete with sammy, goog, apple - hardware (nevermind all the amazon basics branded accessories)
amazon locker, next day delivery - distribution/logistics- FedEx/UPS
the dome - major studios, netflix - content
amazon fresh - safeway, albertsons - food
music/video streaming - apple, netflix, google, MS - digital distribution (and don't forget the game studio they bought)
and with a "store" coming to Manhattan - retail.
what's next, cars? oh, wait
Re: IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:4, Interesting)
> This self feeds where the vast majority internally still are riding on skills from 20yrs ago
Like UNIX, lightweight code, C, consistent API's, and documentation? I'm afraid that while you may run into stodginess problems, a large part of my income right now comes from cleaning up after entrepreneurial spirits who ignore some of our hard-won lessons. And I'm afraid I've now seen several generations of newer developers take on new fads and be forced to re-learn, and re-invent from scratch, the procedures we learned 20 years ago.
I'm not insisting that IBM engineers are currently doing this, but don't underestimate the usefulness of these old skills.
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No, it isn't. Anybody can create an organization that sells a dollar for $0.99. That's not sustainable, and that's not a business.
The US tech industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I came in the tech field quite late (in the 1970's) I've still been around the block a few times, so here's my take ...
IBM
IBM was a sales company with strong tech foundation. Was. Now IBM has turned into a service company
Cisco
Cisco's strength was derived from teams of cracked engineers churning out amazing communication hardware. Was. Now that the cracked teams of engineers have mostly left Cisco has turned more and more like an Indian company
Microsoft
Microsoft used to be THE company that sells software that corporations need (from OS to their office suites). Used to. Now Microsoft is a company clinging onto new versions of legacy software
Apple
Apple used to be a very brave company that dare to come up with strange products that people crave for. Used to. Now Apple, much like Microsoft, is a company clingong onto new versions of legacy hardware
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I agree for the most part on your points. But for major products like Office, we see people here agreeing quite often that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And that is valid too... it is a good product even now. But sure, now they seem to be more interested in catching up and copying other companies' ideas than innovat
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Apple used to be a very brave company that dare to come up with strange products that people crave for. Used to. Now Apple, much like Microsoft, is a company clingong onto new versions of legacy hardware
iPod: 2001. iPhone: 2007. iPad: 2010. Watch: 2014.
Has ANYONE else made that many new categories of hardware that fast, that well, and that successfully? Did any other PC maker EVER do anything more than "just like last year's, but faster/bigger/smaller/cheaper/color/sound/video/etc"? Who -- Dell? HP? Compaq? Asus? Lenovo? IBM? Packard Bell? Palm? Sony? I'm asking seriously -- what companies, in your opinion, did or are doing things right?
Re: The US tech industry (Score:4, Informative)
MP3 players existed before the iPod
Smartphones existed before the iPhone
Tablets existed before the iPad
Smartwatches exist, and the iWatch doesn't
Apple doesn't create new categories; they polish and popularise them - sort of the way Blizzard has done with the RTS, action-RPG, and MMO genres in gaming.
Re:The US tech industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple clings so much to legacy hardware that the CPU clock speed of their new entry-level Mac mini is nearly the same as a decade ago.
That's not apple. That's the entire CPU industry in general. Clock speed, we are right around where we were a decade ago. And that has nothing to do with clinging, but rather what's realistically possible. CPU speed used to increase rapidly because it was the easy way to increase performance year after year. Then we started getting into diminishing returns....smaller improvements in performance even while power consumption and cooling requirements grew rapidly. So now they've learned they need to focus their improvements on both multi-core design as well as per-clock execution efficiency.
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Have you even seen the low-end 2014 Mac mini? It's a 1.5GHz CPU that's supposed to go in ultra-portables. The worst part is, that CPU is more expensive than a regular CPU, so Apple made two mistakes in what is supposed to be their entry model to OS X.
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Apple made two mistakes
Yes, I'm sure there is no market for a low-power quiet mini OSX computer.
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Yes, I'm sure there is no market for a low-power quiet mini OSX computer.
There is, but by making it just a few CCs larger (for a bigger cooler) they could also have made it cheaper and faster. But presumably, that would eat into sales of still more expensive products with larger margins, so that would be a mistake for them. Which just underscores the point of how bad a deal you're getting when you buy Apple hardware.
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What you are describing is the old macbook line. They used to have a macbook and a macbook air. The macbook was designed to be much cheaper than the macbook pro, while the air was slower but much lighter and thinner. At this point they can do an air type design for $1k not $4k. So there is no reason to offer the macbook. If you want performance buy the pro. If you want value for your money, and don't care about design, buy an HP.
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The Mac mini is supposed to be the entry-level Mac. By using a desktop CPU instead of a more expensive, low-voltage and slower laptop CPU, the Mac mini would have been cheaper and more powerful. There used to be a quad-core i7 option before Haswell and those dissipated even more heat so it's not a problem with the size of the case.
Re:The US tech industry (Score:5, Informative)
As many folks have already pointed out in other threads on the subject, Intel screwed up the Haswell line by using an entirely different pinout on the i7 than on the i5. The result is that any motherboard with soldered-on chips has to be specifically designed for one or the other.
Apple chose the i5, presumably because that's the hardware grade where most of the Mini's sales came from, rather than doubling their R&D cost by building two very different motherboards.
Here's hoping Intel doesn't screw up Broadwell in the same way.
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But Apple could still have used something better than 1.5GHz in the entry-level model. Even the 50$CAD Celeron in my gaming PC runs at 2.8GHz.
Modern Intel processors don't run at a fixed speed, the speed is from X GHz to Y GHz. Unlike most manufacturers, Apple advertises the lowest speed. The current entry level Mac Mini has a clock speed from 1.4 GHz to 2.7 GHz, Apple sells it as 1.4 GHz. And an i5 runs circles around a Celeron at comparable clock speed.
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The CPU in your 2011 Mac mini, whatever model you have, is clocked higher than the low-end 2014 Mac mini. I expect more than 1.5GHz in 2014 for a desktop Mac.
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I expect more than 1.5GHz in 2014 for a desktop Mac.
Then you obviously are in the market for a new Mac Pro.
You know you are. Feel the force.
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My 2011 mac mini will last well into 2020.
That really depends on what you do with it.
If you need to run software that uses 20GB of RAM (very likely 5 years from now), you're SOL. If you want to play the latest games at high resolution, or want to drive a 4K monitor, you're SOL. If you want to use a USB 4.0 or Thunderbolt 3 (for example) peripheral at full speed, you're SOL, and depending on the updates to some of the connection standards you might not be able to use it at all.
These aren't all flaws with the Mac Mini specifically, but rather any c
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If you need to run software that uses 20GB of RAM (very likely 5 years from now), you're SOL.
Like you said, it really depends on what you do with it. OS and office applications have mostly stabilized on requirements. Image viewing, even graphic viewing is no longer a sticking point, every computer in the last decade or so can handle high definition video. If he wants to upgrade to 4K or something he'd need a new video card, which should contain enough of it's own processing ability that all all the computer has to do is feed IT the minimally preprocessed video stream for decoding and display.
If
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It's worth noting that direct comparison to P4s high clock speeds can't be made because that family had a longer pipeline and a crippled FP implementation. It was a bad idea driven by marketing to fight in the MHz wars. We are better off that those days are long gone. Modern devices are faster in real terms disregarding clock speeds.
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The Mac mini is getting to be a terrible value NQA. On the low end it offers a very cheap entry point. On the high end it is a ripoff. The iMacs are overpriced and they seem like a better deal.
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Trouble is that Ballmer is just a dicksplat dickhead tosser with a gob that is itching to be filled with concrete along with very fetching matching wellies :-) ..
.
Really?
I thought he was the potty-mouthed, chair-throwing, murder-threatening monkey dancer.
Oh wait... I guess those two descriptions are not mutually exclusive...
.
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Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score:4, Informative)
No, they're selling the fab division and keeping the R&D division. They're turning into a design house, like ARM.
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" They don't make any of the things they 'invent'"
Have you even paid attention to IBM recently with the TrueNorth processor? They sure do make and invent.
Bennett on e-commerce (Score:4, Funny)
Ecommerce is a fast changing world and I know Balmer left Microsoft to go sow his oats in the basketball world, but I think we'd benefit from some insight from Bennett Haselton on the matter, someone outside many industries who has a proven track record for out of the box thinking. I'd like get some insight from him before I draw any conclusions. He's a frequent contributor.
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IT is a fast changing world and I know Balmer got kicked to the curb by Microsoft because he was sowing oats and making poor decisions. Uhm, not making a profit, which is why he probably has an opinion on the subject. What a scrub.
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Microsoft also wanted to delete Steve over the Surface. ;he was called out on the carpet for not making profit.
I wouldn't attribute profit to Ballmer, in fact it sounds like horseshit since the news WAS
But, go ahead and feel free to follow somebodys skewed numbers.
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True enough, MS was profitable under Ballmer.
But more to the point, all that profit came from positive inertia of business decisions made before Ballmer became the Lord High Mukkimuck of the Evil Empire. It is hard to identify any strategy that the potty-mouthed, chair-throwing, murder-threatening monkey dancer initiated that was successful on its own merits. Very hard. The guy was given the reins of the most potent fire breathing profit-making dragon that ever stomped through the free marketplace and he r
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Not really. Prior to Ballmer Microsoft had a profitable OS, Office division with some other misc products like Mice that made money. The explosion into the servers came under Ballmer: SQLServer, Lync, Dynamics... as key players, that's Ballmer not Gates.
Their revenue we
I for one will mis Steve! (Score:4, Funny)
I know that comes as a shock to many of you, but it's true - I will miss him. Motherfucker was comedy gold. Where else do you go for that these days? Schmidt? Fucking gray man in a fucking gray suit. Same with Tim Cook - you can put him in jeans, but he just is a guy hat would rather be in a boardroom than on a stage. Larry Ellison? Scary (appropriate for the season), but not funny. The new guy? Nadella? Has the whole exotic foreigner befuddlement thing down (and that's just with respect to HR practice vs. tech culture), but I figure he's not going to be the full-on Olympic chair-throwing, "developers, developers, developers", "I'm going to squirt you with my Zune", "fucking kill Google" sort of guy that Balmer was.
I'm just saying an age has passed. Nothing but gray men, as far as the eye can see. I love my new oligarchs.
Cuban is right (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, exactly the same as Microsoft, Oracle, etc.
Balmer is a smart man. (Score:3)
He knows fine well Amazon could start generating profits whenever they want. It is a crazy business model they have but it continues to work well for them. Every year they have more fingers in a plethora of interconnected pies.
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The Internet Mall of Everything (which is nice, because you can buy everything from breakfast cereal to plasma TV's without having to re-register for ANOTHER website and feed yet another vendor your CC info).
A cloud service provider
A streaming video service
A music service
A mechanical turk service
A eBook service
A cell phone maker(sure, this one is still s
Ballmer investment portfolio (Score:4, Interesting)
$2 billion. For the Clippers.
Bezos wants to suck the entire market into the Amazon central economy.
But let us reason together: the distinguishing qualities of both Ballmer and Cuban are that they were both at the right place at the right time. And both are complete pricks.
Bezos is a menace. But Ballmer strikes me as clown and a lackwit.
Is he planning on making back the $2B from the Clippers? Or did he just need his own shiny like Cuban?
Ballmer Brewskies Clipper Cuppers (Score:3)
Is he planning on making back the $2B from the Clippers? Or did he just need his own shiny like Cuban?
Only after he sells 200 Million Beers at $10 each....
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I don't think he expects to make his money back on the Clippers. He wanted a basketball team, he had enough money to buy a basketball team for a price nobody would match without making a outsized hole in his bank account, so he bought a basketball team. If you say, according to his definition, that's not a business, he would probably cheerfully agree with you.
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Is he planning on making back the $2B from the Clippers?
He probably will when he sells it. The price of NBA teams is not going down. That said......
Or did he just need his own shiny like Cuban?
.....shiny is the reason he bought it. He's not running out of money.
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Cuban is a bit of a prick, but he is a very smart prick. I too used to think he was just a guy who got lucky, but watching him on Shark Tank has changed my mind.
"Ballmer's World" (Score:2, Offtopic)
Ballmer said on the Charlie Rose Show. "In my world
That fires an NMI for me right there. I'm not particularly fond of "Ballmer's World".
I would be quite pleased if he would do us all a favor, and keep his world to himself.
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Ballmer said on the Charlie Rose Show....
Yeah, too bad he didn't' do the "Geraldo" show instead ...they would've angrily tossed chairs at each other.
When you invest in innovation... (Score:2)
An insult from a dork is a compliment (Score:4, Interesting)
It should be kept in mind that the theory of perfect markets says that competition drives all profits to zero. So making an extremely slim margin is a sign of a healthily functioning market, whereas the absurdly high profits that MS have made in the last 20 years are proof that free markets did not do their job in the case of MS software. So I would say that MicroSoft was not a "real business". It was, as we all know, a de-facto monopoly. And a monopoly is not a "real business". Real businesses compete against other businesses.
So? Ballmer ist not a real manager (Score:3)
Quite seriously, first he steered MS from having the muscle in any negotiation with whomever (from retailer to customer, they could say "my way or the highway" and their "partners" could only grin and bear it) to a mediocre company that has to accept setback after setback, only to blow the money he swindled our of piledriving MS on a mediocre (if that) sports team.
He'd probably be a great manager for GM, a bank or anything else that we have to prop up now because their managers are about as useful as monkey boy, but just like a company that makes no profit is no business, an idiot that drives companies into a freefall tailspin is no manager.
I've questioned that myself (Score:4, Interesting)
From a BBC documentary on Amazon (Business Boomers) someone said "Amazon was designed to be a shark right from the start." It's true in a way. Since spending money is no issue, it can do whatever it wants with its prices while growing its business areas. However its brick & mortar (or online) rivals cannot. They don't have an infinite credit line with their banks or investors, and depend on their profit margins. I'm wondering why European governments have not cracked down on this unfair "business" that is Amazon?
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You are confused, if Amazon continues to spend more money than it makes, it will not be able to pay its creditors' loans and it will fail. Problem if any is self-solving.
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Because Amazon isn't nearly as big outside of the US. Amazon's revenue from all other countries combined add up to something like 2/3rd of what they make in the US alone. Its significant, but when you split it between all the major foreign markets, its not that big of a threat.
As most US based e-retailers have to deal with, europe and asia tends to favor local companies, even for e-commerce, and regardless of if the foreign company has a local presence or not (so shipping isn't an issue). So they're not see
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Amazon already does that in some countries (in some countries, you HAVE to. UPS/Fedex isn't everywhere), and in some cases even in the US they'll use local shipping companies (ie: companies that are only doing business in a specific part of a specific town).
Thats not enough. I was working for a very large (not as large as amazon, but still large) retail company trying to do business internationally. Just the fact that it was an American company hurt it. A trick was to just buy the name of a small local comp
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Cloud (Score:3)
Amazon created and dominated the cloud as we know it before Microsoft even knew it existed. To this day, Microsoft's prices on Azure are about twice that of AWS, and Microsoft doesn't have a prayer in taking that market. All Microsoft has ever done is a half-assed attempt to buy their way into yet-another-market. If Amazon wasn't so laser focused on defining what the cloud means and pouring in R&D dollars, sure they could make a little more money. If Amazon wasn't pushing boundaries like same-day delivery, sure they could make a little more money. Put another way, if Ballmer wasn't so focused on making a little more money, and could be laser focused on R&D and pushing boundaries, maybe he could dominate a market like Amazon - but he left that post years ago.
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Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It's interesting that Ballmer would say this, given that Microsoft made a big effort to carbon copy AWS during his leadership.
To everything....turn, turn, turn (Score:2)
What an archaic mentality. (Score:3)
These days, the measure of being a success is being able to lose staggering amounts of money while continuing to exist. The bonus round is where the government bails it out because it's too big to fail and the whole cycle repeats on a larger scale.
People in glass houses (Score:3)
Er, yeah. You know what else originally made no money? Surface, Xbox, Bing, Zune, Windows Mobile/Phone, Internet Explorer, Office, Windows.
I'm supposed to care what Ballmer thinks? (Score:3)
I guess this article is here because I'm supposed to care what Ballmer thinks, or that his ravings are somehow important or influential.
Sorry, but I don't, and they're not.
Making no money? (Score:2)
Xbox, Xbox360, Zune, Surface, all were sold below cost to penetrate (or try to) the market.
Yes they're making money on Windows and Office, but if it weren't for
a) the fact Windows comes with PCs (and they strongarmed OEMs to pay for licenses and/or stop installing other OSes (IBM and OS/2 come to mind), the fact that they hid APIs from competitors, and other tactics,
b) the fact businesses are stuck with Office for compatibility reasons
They probably wouldn't be in business (or at least not that big)
He's been wrong before (Score:3)
His words about Google in early 00's: "They're commies without a business model." And look at him now.
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Ok, I'm declaring it. People are no longer allowed to use the word "Monopoly" The general public clearly has no idea what the word means, and like here, completely misuse it.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
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Umm.. OK.
Lest you forget, Microsoft was ruled both a monopoly in 2000, and ruled they miss-used their monopoly power. They were going to be split into multiple companies until the 2000 election changed the political landscape and the Federal government dropped the suit.
What makes you think Microsoft STILL doesn't hold monopoly power over the PC business? They don't hold as much of a stranglehold anymore, but I'd say it's still very much a monopoly.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
You're still not on the mark. Microsofts success was BUYING DOS for $50k. Talk about profit.
Previous to that, I suppose Bills education as a Lawyer was probably the fuel for later hijinx.
I still like the part about his 1st OS for the Altair being sold on punchcards which in turn were copied by enthusiasts and shared.
Bill still made a profit, but the die was cast for a poor business model.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Previous to that, I suppose Bills education as a Lawyer was probably the fuel for later hijinx.
Bill dropped out of a computer science program to start a business building software for traffic statistics equipment. Going to Harvard is not the same as being educated as a lawyer-- they DO teach other things than law there.
Seriously, where are people getting all of their bogus info? Every thread its people spouting about crypto, history, politics, and 90% of it is wrong.
Re: (Score:3)
No. His father. However, his mom was on the same charity board that IBM's CEO was. "Oh, you do computers? I should introduce you to my son, he does computers too!" and that's how Microsoft got it's start.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsofts success was BUYING DOS for $50k.
Minor quibble: Microsoft licensed DOS for $50K, while Patterson held back some rights. Later on after various payments and negotiations it is estimated that the final cost was more like $500K. By then DOS was already a screaming success, so they got off easy.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Starting up after dumpster diving for BASIC interpreter source code wasn't interesting enough?
The MS business model has always been to sell something that has already been demonstrated as a success by someone else and then use lawyers to stop the next in line doing the same thing. It's not unique (outside of computing) and it's not as bad as some of the practices of Cisco, HP etc (and MS being underhanded enough to deal with clones led to the cheap PC) - the only tragedy is they came to dominate so there wasn't really a lot of other stuff to copy and compete with. That's probably a major reason why computers generally still suck to use compared to what we would have expected by now. The MS Windows 10 desktop looks like a linux desktop from before this site even existed and the back end is nowhere near as good - how pathetic is that?
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Its hard to top that!
Re: (Score:3)
Many other people were introduced to IBM including Gary Kildall from Digital Research, yet he didn't become a billionaire.
And by the time he was introduced personally to IBM he was already well known for shipping the dominant basic interpreter for all personal computers, IBM compatible or not.
Re: (Score:3)
What the hell is that FUD?
What's that about "illegal backward engineering of motorola chips", what are you smoking? Apple used real Motorola CPUs just like Amiga and Atari ST.
And that Apple Corps lawsuit was just a legal battle about a name, not industrial espionnage.
There's plenty of reasons to bash Apple if you want to, but your reasons are pulled out of thin air.
Re:Is Microsoft a company? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
A quick check [nasdaq.com] shows that they pay dividends quarterly, but the dividend rate (compared to stock price) isn't particularly great... While their dividends have risen somewhat in recent history, their stock price hasn't even kept up with inflation. IBM [nasdaq.com] is about the same rate, and AT&T [nasdaq.com] is notably better.
The investors were apparently right. Microsoft's stock price has gone roughly nowhere in the last decade, mostly because they're one of the most boring companies to invest in. They don't pay high dividends,
Re: (Score:3)
Market cap doesn't have any bearing on ROI. If I'm looking to invest $10,000 for dividend returns, I'll be investing in something with a higher return for the price, with little concern* for the vehicle's total size, as market cap shows.
That Microsoft is bigger than Amazon is actually even more cause for alarm. Amazon has far less cash in their coffers, and does more (at least, more interesting to investors) with it.
* Some concern for diversity should always be held, but that's beside the point.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, he's too busy trying to run his pizza shop.
Muttered something about IT being a vacuum of wasted time and wanted to get back to things that mattered.
Re: (Score:2)
I parallel his career with that of Marilyn Manson. He was a thing for a while, had his controversy and publicity. Now everyone has had enough of the ride and has moved on. Look for Steve to host the Tech segment on HSN in the future, with negotiations for Hollywood squares in the works. Steve always had his eye on Don Knotts square.
Re: (Score:3)
I think this may be a sign to buy Amazon stock, the patented Ballmer Reverse Bellweather has just indicated they're going to have a huge, massive 2016.
Re: (Score:2)
He is definitely a one hit wonder, blowhard, douchebag. but that doesn't make him wrong necessarily.