When Bill Gates says something outrageous or false, you get the distinct impression that he actually believes what he’s saying. With Steve Ballmer, the new chief executive at Microsoft Corp., it’s the opposite. The more off-the-wall the Ballmer remark, the more you can suspect he doesn’t buy it, either.
That’s just one of the differences between the two men, who are not peas in a pod despite their ultra-close working relationship and friendship over the past few years. Gates is dazzlingly bright, and possesses the best strategic sense of anyone in the technology industry. He’s also shown himself over the years to be utterly ruthless — willing to do or say almost anything to bring his company to prominence and then to keep it there.
Ballmer doesn’t give off that aura of sheer genius, but he’s extremely bright and strategic in his thinking. He’s also plenty ruthless. But Ballmer has a sense of humor, and he’s ultimately a practical person.
The latter quality, I suspect, will work to Microsoft’s favor under the new regime — if Ballmer has the authority to steer the company as he sees fit. I’m betting Microsoft under Ballmer will find a way to settle the antitrust suit with the government, just as the company cut a deal to make the Caldera Inc. antitrust case go away, the settlement of which was announced earlier this week.
Microsoft’s shareholders are winners today.
Encryption Rules
The Clinton administration continues to play hide-and-seek (SiliconValley.com story) with truth when it comes to export regulation on strong encryption. The latest rules, while clearly a step forward, are plainly designed in part to keep the process as complex and unwieldy as possible.
As Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, put it in a statement on Thursday, “Now that the Administration has tacitly admitted that it can’t and shouldn’t control the use of encryption, it should have announced a simple deregulation, rather than regulatory maze.”
Microsoft Trial Balloon
I’m in awe of the counterspin techniques at the U.S. Department of Justice or in the offices of the state attorneys general who are part of the Microsoft antitrust case. Someone is floating a trial balloon (SiliconValley.com) about breaking up Microsoft.
These leaks to the press, which began with USA Today on Wednesday, came just after the AOL deal to buy Time Warner — a deal Microsoft apologists said proved there was no need to do anything serious in the way of antitrust remedies in the Microsoft case. Of course, the arrival of a new bully on the block has never meant that the old bully is free to do his nasty thing, but the DOJ folks brought the Microsoft debate squarely back where it belonged, reminding people that Microsoft’s behavior problem hasn’t been cured.