Microsoft's Elop is Like Rick Belluzzo - Hijacks Nokia, Sells to Microsoft, Then Exits

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-04 15:42:28 UTC
Modified: 2011-05-04 15:42:28 UTC

Summary: Stephen Elop -- just like Richard Belluzzo before him -- joins Microsoft, briefly afterwards leaving the company and leaving a lot of chaos

NOVELL is over, but Microsoft's destruction of its surroundings is not over. The Microsoft cult continues to damage good companies and this harms the jobs of very many good people. The cost of Microsoft to the economy is immeasurably high. In Nokia, for example, the number of full-time employees was greater than at Microsoft, but it did not prevent Microsoft from stealthily acquiring Nokia for just a few billions. The FSFE's founder compared the Nokia deal with Microsoft to that of Novell. Elop was compared by one of our readers to Rick Bellouszo, who basically just came Microsoft, then hopped onto another company. Prior to it he derailed and annulled a strategy which was driving GNU/Linux and other Microsoft rivals; he switched it over to Windows/Microsoft. He then jumped ship, receiving a reward in the form of a wage from Microsoft. These people are like Carl Icahn, only a lot less dumb.

According to Microsoft booster Matt Rosoff, Elop may have entered Nokia only for the purpose of shaking the hands of his former boss, Steve Ballmer. If true, he was there just to sign a rather corrupt takeover, in other words to act as Microsoft's mole:

Murtazin also tweeted yesterday that he has heard from sources that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is a short-termer, and will retire at the end of 2012 once the Windows Phone transition is compete.

"Elop to retire 2012," says Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat. "Mission accomplished? Nokia, I pity you."

Microsoft: destroying one competitor at a time. Is RIM the next one to die? If Microsoft can destroy all the rivals (with patents, hostile deals, bribes, etc.), then people will have no choice but to use Windows. Microsoft can only compete when the customers cannot choose, e.g. in the OEM channel. ⬆

"I’d be glad to help tilt lotus into into the death spiral. I could do it Friday afternoon but not Saturday. I could do it pretty much any time the following week."

--Brad Silverberg, Microsoft

Comments

twitter

2011-05-04 18:50:15

The damage Belluzzo did to HP, SGI and the world of Unix is still felt today. He convinced both to shift to NT on Itanium. NT was and still is terrible software for the server markets it was marketed for. Came late and was ultimately just as expensive as but technically inferior to the chips Microsoft killed this way. The chip families killed were MIPS, Alpha and PA RISC. Alpha was used by Slashdot and others for early web servers. MIPS is the chipset family found in Richard Stallman's free from the bios up laptop. The rise of gnu/linux would probably have happened ten years ago if Belluzzo had not gotten away with this obvious sabotage.

It is unlikely that Microsoft will prevail this time. IBM, Google and ARM are not likely to repeat the errors of the past by backing down or otherwise cooperating with Microsoft and Intel. Thanks for documenting the destruction of Nokia. We can hope for justice that might come from exposing the scheme in context.

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-04 18:52:54

Do you have links about what Belluzzo did to HP? We do not have this documented anywhere.

twitter

2011-05-05 00:04:18

Some research was a good idea. All I had were the links I dug up and presented in IRC a few months ago. In that collection and in a subsequent article, you pointed to the Urban Dictionary term "Belluzzo". Above, you have Wikipedia which has the claim I repeated, that Belluzzo pushed NT + Itanium over HP-UX and PA-RISC. Now I see that the guy as part of the end of the "HP Way" and the beginning of the end of the company. What a depressing story HP is.

I found one technical article, from an Apple person, a bunch of Microsoft puff pieces and all of it is damning. Here, we have a technical discussion of the merits of RISC and how Belluzzo was a fool to abandon PA-RISC for Intel. I also found two Business Week articles, which basically expound a Microsoft party line. This one shows Belluzzo as a sales guy in the right place to do bad things to HP. He joined the xerography group and rode the desktop publishing world then the Microsoft PC expansion to end up in control of 80% of the company's revenues. Business Week is full of praise for the man, his Microsoft alliances and his attack on the HP Way.

besides just tweaking HP's organization chart, Belluzzo is trying to inject more life into the fabled HP Way -- a code of behavior that promotes quality, fairness, and trust, but not always urgency. Last Christmas, after noting a cie la vie attitude of salespeople when HP lost a big computer contract, Belluzzo penned a long memo to staffers. "We need to develop a 'NO EXCUSE' mentality toward winning business. We need to have the expectation that we can win every deal,"

So, in Belluzzo and an influx in Microsoft money, we see the company taking it's steps towards being just another PC maker, dependent on Microsoft instead of being a computer company. A peak at the hostility this generated can be seen in this book, which looks written from a Microsoft perspective. David Woodly Packard apparently disagreed with Belluzzo about becoming a Microsoft sales department but what's visible of the book simply smears Packard,

HP-PA leadership was by now hollow-and the founder's son, David Woodley Packard, who had been installed on the HP board at the same time as Walter Hewlett in 1987 to provide some family legacy for the board, was openly critical of both the Windtel focus and the declining fortunes of high-end computing for HP. Rick Belluzzo described it as having to endure Packard's jibes "in a disgusting way for years afterwards." [the success story of Compaq buying DEC in order to compete with HP in real computing is told]

The next Business Week article paints him as the savior of SGI and HP all in one. Later, we get the Seattle Times trying to figure out why Microsoft hired this yahoo with no tech background. One year later, Microsoft filed two documents with the SEC. This one, where he was fired and paid $15,335,000 instead of getting the two million stock options he expected, and this one where the company lent him another $15,000,000. Chump change for the boys at Microsoft, especially for someone who had rendered such valuable services.

Given the tilt that Belluzzo had given HP, it is no surprise to find HP under a "Rock Star". Fiorina would spin off the instrumentation soul of HP and purchase Compaq only to crush the technically superior Alpha and end her tenure in a board room spying scandal as the Microsoft money machine broke down around them. Employees still hate her.

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-05 11:56:02

The departure of Hurd was even more mysterious

http://techrights.org/2010/08/23/hp-reverses-some-palm-plans/ http://techrights.org/2010/08/25/mark-hurd-exit-post-mortem/ http://techrights.org/2010/09/30/apotheker-entryism-at-hp/

We'll see if Leo is another Belluzzo. Groklaw pointed out his Windows advocacy about 2 weeks ago.
twitter

2011-05-05 23:16:33

Researching HP some more also shed some light on EDS, a huge government service provider. Remember when EMC/Microsoft blew up VITA, closing down all sorts of Virginia state services? It turns out that EMC is also part of HP's "Agility Alliance" along with HP owned EDS. EDS has also brought high costs and inefficiency to government agencies and private companies such as the RAF, UK MoD, BSkyB, the UK Child Support Agency, and the US Securities Exchange Commission. What a mess Microsoft partners are, especially in large scale deployments.

Needs Sunlight

2011-05-05 09:02:23

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=belluzzo

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-05 11:53:24

It's a good link. To quote parts: "Despite those being disastrous decisions for the companies he was supposedly "working" "for", Belluzzo did well for himself, being given a President + COO job at Microsoft after killing SGI and HP's 64-bit-computing strategies.

"Those acts - along with the reward from Microsfot - got him the nickname "the microsoft mole" (google "microsoft mole Belluzzo") in those companies, and occaionally the term "a belluzzo" is used to describe someone who seems to be acting in the interest of a different company than the one he works for."

girts

2011-05-04 16:58:43

What will do shareholders and OSI will they do something? I no more believe them!

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-04 17:05:26

They ought to have sued and some were going to. I don't know what happened.

girts

2011-05-04 16:11:17

Where is regulators and DOJ???

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-04 16:16:52

Awaiting public complaints, I guess. It's a shame the OSI or the FSF didn't respond to this like they responded to CPTN. Nokia's shareholders too ought to have sued and the European Commission been involved.

Agent_Smith

2011-05-05 12:56:11

Hey folks, HP bought Palm to make WebOS. I don't think they'll back off their plans to be free(and to become a competitor) from M$. I would say WebOS is the only thing that will make HP stand apart the other hardware manufacturers. But, if they want to go Yahoo and Nokia's way... It's the graveyard way to anyone infected by M$'s moles.

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-05 14:03:09

Yes, but see what Leo said about their desktops.

Agent_Smith

2011-05-05 22:47:13

Hummm, I just found this link: HP CEO Leo Apotheker Wants HP to Be 'Cool' Like Apple http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/HP-CEO-Leo-Apotheker-Wants-HP-to-Be-Cool-Like-Apple-173924/

I guess he's aiming at crApple...

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-05 23:54:50

Apple has become a leader in some areas, just HP in other areas.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-05 23:55:15

s/just HP/just like HP/

girts

2011-05-05 16:11:30

Microsoft want to stay in mobile business but they is going incorrect road. Company is excellent, but Steve must change strategy. Microsoft I think is in despair due low market share and now they have decline in Windows and this mean that Balmer must go open source. They need people with new ideas because there are lots of things which are not improved. There is need discussions and industry must ask this. Why? Because Microsoft must stay because there are lots of fans of Microsoft and we must respect them and Mac OS X too. We need discussions with Regulators and DOJ and they I believe can help. Sorry, but with good things we can help Microsoft because they are people and we all in world making in over life' s mistakes. I think that with good we can help them. Trust me!

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2011-05-05 16:37:13

Microsoft is the 'baby' of some megalomaniacal people who since their early teen years have had damaging aspirations. As long as these people drive the company, I'd rather see the company bust. Their developers would find other companies to work for.

Microsoft's Elop is Like Rick Belluzzo - Hijacks Nokia, Sells to Microsoft, Then Exits

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