Microsoft has a problem—a big one. The problem is not just that its CEO, Steve Ballmer, has had a disastrous 10-year run. That’s been obvious for a while now, as I first pointed out last October in a piece titled “The Lost Decade—Why Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates.”
It even prompted me to predict, last fall, that Ballmer would get pushed out of Microsoft this year.That wasn’t a popular position at the time. Microsoft’s head of PR called my piece a “hit job on Steve,” and told me all the ways I was wrong and stupid and off the mark. Then he pretty much stopped communicating with me.
I figured he was just in denial, or maybe just saying what he needed to say because he was getting paid to say it.
But my goodness, how much difference a year makes—because these days everyone seems to be piling on Ballmer. And that poor PR guy has a much bigger problem on his hands.[From Drumbeats: The Tech Press Turns on Microsoft’s Ballmer – Newsweek]