Microsoft’s Ballmer Calls Google One Hit Wonder, Mocks Management Skills & Criticizes Future Growth

Mar 16, 2007 at 8:40am ET by Barry Schwartz

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, spoke at Stanford University the other day, calling Google a one-hit wonder, mocking Google’s personal time concept and calling their growth expectations “insane.”

Ballmer questions business strategy of Google from Tech World reports Ballmer saying Google is “really just one business, a search and advertising business” and they are “trying to make it into a second one, that’s right and we’ll see how they do.” He then compares how Microsoft has went from PC software, to server software, to Internet Explorer and even the Xbox.
Microsoft CEO Says Google A ‘One-Trick Pony’ from CBS5.com reports that Steve Ballmer said “a random collection of people trying to do their own thing—that doesn’t create value, in my opinion.” Which, in a sense, mocks Google’s management skills – the same ones that have come up with Google AdSense and many other successful products. Of course, many of the concepts and projects from the 20% time, has also launched some failures.
Ballmer takes a potshot at Google’s ‘insane’ growth from The News Tribune reports Ballmer saying, “They’re going to double in a year. That’s insane, in my opinion.”

Postscript From Danny: Looking At Microsoft’s Continued Long Game In Search covers similar quotes Microsoft execs have made in the past over the years.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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7 COMMENTS ON Microsoft’s Ballmer Calls Google One Hit Wonder, Mocks Management Skills & Criticizes Future Growth

sportsguy, March 16th, 2007 at 10:23 am ET:

Now that’s really mature.

Sure they’re young. But you’re at the tail end of the pack, bub.

Name-calling won’t get MSN any farther ahead in the game…

weslinda, March 16th, 2007 at 12:07 pm ET:

I wouldn’t mind being a one hit wonder with a few billion in the bank and one of the top brands in the world. But I guess if you are Microsoft, I guess trying to do one thing well, and not rule the world is a poor business model.

Philipp Lenssen, March 16th, 2007 at 12:22 pm ET:

> Microsoft’s Ballmer Calls Google One Hit Wonder

He’s really silly. They should be focused on their own web strategy, which so far sucks, instead of dissing competition. But all the better for Google…

dangerlarson, March 16th, 2007 at 2:53 pm ET:

Every one of the best entrepreneurs had far more failures than they had successes. Who cares if Google had a bunch of flops? How is their bottom line? They have more cash than they can handle!

Criticism of others publicly always comes back to bite a person in the rear. Hope Stevie doesn’t mind that tear in the seat of his chinos.

Lucky Lester, March 16th, 2007 at 4:08 pm ET:

I couldn’t imagine how much more of a pain in the ass Google would be if they had even more success… they might even rival Microsoft’s arrogance! Yahoo come back so we can have a 3 pony show again!

RayPays, March 17th, 2007 at 12:00 pm ET:

I fiind it funny that a company President whos organization has bumbled through its existence for more than two decades with nothing of value to offer. Didnt someone tell him people in glass houses shouldnt throw stones ? Should we bring up some of your misses, like windows ? or how about windows mobile ? need we dig up your product called Word ? There is no need to bring up the web. You have struck out there so many times it isnt even funny. In fact, I have hard time finding anything MS has done since its original DOS shell that could be considered a success. I nominate the President and his company for a top position in the clunky crap hall of fame ! LOL !

BG Mahesh, March 18th, 2007 at 12:42 am ET:

A reaction of this type from MS only exposes how scared they are of Google :-( Why hasn’t http://www.live.com/ adopted Google/Yahoo’s route of submitting URLs thru sitemaps? These are such simple utilities every webmaster looks for and these tools only increases the stickiness of the search engine.

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