05.26.11
Microsoft Skype is Collapsing While Ballmer is Pressured to Resign and More People Flee
Summary: Debt-saddled Microsoft is losing Skype users, losing staff, and the CEO is asked to step down
MICROSOFT’S growing debt is being discussed quite heavily in IRC right now (logs will have been published by the morning). It was not so long ago that IBM, which almost had gone bankrupt, surpassed Microsoft in terms of perceived market value (which is a value of meaning only to Wall Street with all of its infamous bubbles).
“Here is a link you might enjoy,” wrote to us a reader some minutes ago, “I always figure that when Gates saw the dead end for Microsoft ($18 bn loss at the end of the 90′s), Ballmer was brought it to ride it into the ground.”
This relates to the following news that’s seemingly everywhere by now. To quote one article:
Hedge fund president calls for Microsoft CEO to step down
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer should step down and “give someone else a chance” according to hedge fund manager David Einhorn, pointing to the drastic drop in the Redmond-based company’s stock over the past decade.
Einhorn said that Microsoft’s chief executive is “stuck in the past” and his presence inside the company is the “biggest overhang on Microsoft stock” whilst speaking at the Ira Sohn Investment Research Conference in New York on Wednesday. Ironically, Microsoft’s stock – which has barely risen or fallen in over a decade – actually gained 0.87 percent in after-hours trading after the outspoken hedge fund manager’s comments, the most of any industry average industrial component on the Dow Jones.
As we noted earlier this month, his crazy purchase of Skype might cost him his job. His outrageous, inflammatory statements about Free software cannot help either. But perhaps more importantly and timely is the Skype crash that is being reported at the moment. To quote the article “Skype crashes and burns” from the start of the problem description: “But now the service has given up the ghost, sending me into an infinite loop as non-functionality on two machines, one running that old dog Vista and one running funky new-fangled WIndows 7.”
“As we noted earlier this month, his crazy purchase of Skype might cost him his job.”A few years ago Skype crashed for everyone because of Windows Update. Put Microsoft and Skype together and all that’s left is an exclusionary service that blocks competition [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] and wields software patents. To quote Linux guru SJVN: “I told you so. I knew that Steve Ballmer could talk all he wanted about how Microsoft would continue to support non-Microsoft platforms, but that there was no way he’d actually do it. The first proof is here. Digium, the company behind the popular open-source Asterisk private-branch exchange (PBX) program, has announced that Skype has unilaterally ended its deal that allowed Asterisk to work with Skype.”
Microsoft has chosen to work with nobody else (of value) and instead to stomp on everything. This is why the company is failing where it cannot break the law (e.g. to ensure OEMs only ever install Windows). The Microsoft boosters currently try to find out why a self-professed open source backer is quitting Microsoft [1, 2] just like many companies are fleeing away from Microsoft:
In 2008, Microsoft hired Hamilton “Hammett” Verissimo, the founder of the open-source Castle Project, as a program manager on the Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF) team in the company’s Developer Division. On May 17, 2011, Verissimo quit Microsoft.
He merely leaves a sinking ship along with almost all the top managers, except Mundie the lobbyist, Gutierrez the patent extortionist, and Ballmer the bully. The company we now know as Microsoft is a racketeer, a mole, a liquidator, and a darn good liar. █
girts said,
May 26, 2011 at 11:26 am
Excellent news for free world and for GNU Telephony!!!
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 26th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Here are some free/libre alternatives to Skype. This week I am also trying Jitsi (jitsi.org). So does Tim from TechBytes.
One of our members has begun compiling a list in our wiki, too.
Needs Sunlight said,
May 27, 2011 at 2:57 am
Heck. They should hire me. I’ll work for half of what they’ve been giving Ballmer. I’d let most of the staff go, see compliance with both EU and US regulations, EOL existing platforms except for XP, drop VB and C# for Java and Perl, and MSIE would get replaced by Opera. Then I’d hire in the lost staff from Nokia and Yahoo to build a FreeBSD based OS like Apple is doing, but it’d be a FreeBSD-based version of Rays.
All that could be done in about 2 years.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 27th, 2011 at 3:03 am
This “burning the old boats” strategy would require even more loans for Microsoft. Maybe Apple will be kind enough to invest in Microsoft to save itself?
Needs Sunlight Reply:
May 27th, 2011 at 5:17 am
The loans can be avoided or reduced by axing management and other non-producing positions.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 27th, 2011 at 5:25 am
Gutierrez and his team?
Needs Sunlight Reply:
May 27th, 2011 at 5:23 am
The two products that M$ makes income on are the monopoly on OEMs and the monopoly on office formats. ODF has tough row to hoe, but is making steady progress. Android is leading the way for the OEMs. When those are gone, M$ is gone — unless it can re-invent itself to make money using traditional products and services. That’s an event that is highly unlikely given the cult-like behavior that its staff and boosters exhibit. It could turn around but probably won’t. If it won’t then it is best for all of us if it just goes away. The sooner it goes away, the more money we save and the better our national cyberdefense will be. The question is how to handle all the toxic staff and boosters. Can they be re-tooled for jobs outside of IT?
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
May 27th, 2011 at 5:26 am
They transition into a software patents taxman. Failing to reform the USPTO, we need to ensure a lot of patent trolls make this a nightmare strategy for Microsoft.