Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft CEO is Dumping MSFT

Summary: Additional signs that Vista Phony 7 [sic] is failing as Ballmer dumps close to a fifth of his holdings in the company he runs

LOOK NO FURTHER than Microsoft for evidence of the company's gradual collapse. Even its top people lost faith. Bill Gates has been getting rid of his Microsoft shares for quite some time (only gradually), but Steve Ballmer too is starting to get rid of Microsoft shares, starting with a huge disposal of $1.34 billion in Microsoft stock.



Steve BallmerChips B Malroy says that "If this isn't an impending sign that the stock is going tank soon, then its a sign of Ballmer being soon forced out, or both." There is a lot more in the IRC logs. "Notice that the sales," he adds, "were not made (at least the news of the sale) public until late Friday... Because a sale like this by the CEO would have caused the stock price to tank.

"It looks like Ballmer is trying to cash in, and just doesn't have enough stock, even with his one position on the board itself, to prevent his eventual ouster. Just more rats deserting the sinking ship, but this time it might be the CEO himself."

According to Microsoft boosters, Ballmer will sell almost a fifth of his stake. The sources add: "Ballmer last made a sale of Microsoft stock in 2003. Bill Gates remains the largest individual shareholder in the company. The Microsoft chairman routinely sells 80 million shares a year in a portfolio diversification strategy. As of the company's last proxy statement, Gates owned 621 million shares, or more than 7 percent of the company."

“But if you sell it too fast, it will surely tank.”
      --Chips B Malroy
"Ok, so neither Ballmer or Gates wants to be left holding the bag of Microsoft stock when it tanks," Chips B Malroy speculates. "But if you sell it too fast, it will surely tank.

"Could it be that WP7 is already a bust, with Kinect not far behind? Is this the real reason that the CEO is dumping stock?"

Both products had about half a billion dollars dedicated just to marketing. That is some huge waste. Ballmer recently joked rather than properly answered the question when asked if WP7 (Vista Phony 7 [sic]) failing would cost him his job.

Chips B Malroy quotes from a very recent article (or several): "But given how many mistakes Microsoft made in the design of the Windows Phone 7 OS, it probably makes sense to focus on not using the device. No one, as near as I can tell, will want to spend much time with it. Maybe the slogan should be "The smartphone for people who hate smartphones." [...] It doesn't support copy-and-paste. It doesn't offer an easy way to switch between open applications. And it doesn't have a universal search that allows you to find applications, content, messages or other data stored on your device. [...] What's more, its Web browser supports neither Adobe's Flash software nor HTML5, which Apple has promoted as an alternative to Flash."

Notice that Microsoft shares no numbers about WP7 (Vista Phony 7 [sic]) sales. It means that the number of actual sales (not channel stuffing and granting of phones to all Microsoft employees, with an apparent similar deal at Dell) must be embarrassing.

Oiaohm responds by saying: "Android is only first wave of Linux. Meego is lining up to be second wave. So we are going to have Meego vs Android. [...] Really, Meego is about unifying distributions. Fedora [and] Suse already have Meego forms."

“Android is only first wave of Linux. Meego is lining up to be second wave.”
      --Oiaohm
"It's important to show that Microsoft is failing to compete with Linux in the form of Android and with Apple on ARM devices. This will be when the snowball start to speed up on the decline of MS," Chips B Malroy claims. "We should not want the US gov to bail out MS when the time comes, as in "too big to fail." MS will try to pull that one. [...] using taxpayers money to bail out MS when and if it fails, is not funny."

"Really, here is the funny part," says Oiaohm in response. "By the time US gov tries to bail out MS it might be impossible. Only way to bail MS out would be to raid it and release all its source code. Basically terminate its existence."

Chips B Malroy continues: "Well, the brainwashed here will be crying for the gov to bail them out, so they won't have to try another OS. Inertia is all that is keeping MS going, that and the hold they have on OEM's preinstalls. The preinstalls are now in effect being broken by Apple and Google. This trend is likely to rapidly accelerate. At some point, enough users will have used Android/ChromeOS and iOS on ARM devices to try them on Intel computers. When that happens, MS is dead."

"But OEM preinstalls are not going to be enough," replies Oiaohm. "Linux has preinstalls now on phones and other devices. The market is poisoned. Problem is in a way that there is no way to stop it [editor's note: actually, Microsoft reportedly extorts with patents in attempt to prevent this now]. It's exactly like when Linux took the super computer market. Just on a large scale."

The full conversation will be published later.

For those who think that this is far fetched, remember that Microsoft's debt is growing and the future seems far from promising, even based on analysts (who are usually easy for companies to 'buy'). Just because rich people came out of Microsoft does not mean they'll donate their money to save Microsoft. It just doesn't work that way.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
 
Links 10/06/2025: Apple Hype and Physical Attacks on Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/06/2025: Loon Lake, Farming, and Forth
Links for the day
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year