Top 10 reasons why Steve Ballmer should be certified insane

Davey Winder
Sunday, 21 September 2008 17:12

IT Industry - Strategy

Steve Ballmer is many things: Microsoft CEO, 43rd richest person on the planet, monkey dancing video star. Wikipedia says that he has "been known to be very passionate in expressing his enthusiasm." We have 10 reasons to suggest (tongue in cheek) he should be in a rubber room eating soft fruit...

There is no doubting that Steve Ballmer has come a long way since managing the Harvard University football team. There is no doubting that Steve Ballmer has done good, to the tune of around USD $15 billion in the bank.

Yet there would seem to be plenty of reasons to doubt one thing about Steve Ballmer, and that is his sanity. We've put together, in reverse order, a top 10 chart to show just how Barmy Ballmer got his nickname:

10. Talking about technology stock valuations Ballmer is reported to have said that "There is such an overvaluation of technology stocks that it is absurd. I would include our stock in that category." Hardly a sane comment about your own company.

09. Responding to charges of Microsoft being a monopoly we have the double whammy of "We don`t have a monopoly. We have market share. There`s a difference." and "I don`t know what a monopoly is until somebody tells me."

08. Or how about talking about Apple and the iPod? Ballmer reckons that "We’ve had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'."

07. Still on the subject of the Evil Apple Empire, Ballmer is quoted as saying "My children - in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod."

06. And talking of Evil Empires, Ballmer can get a little quirky when Linux is mentioned. "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches."

05. On the success of Vista, Ballmer seems to be making a positive out of the ability to buy it and downgrade to XP. "Customers get both. I don't know how you can do better than getting both."

04. Ballmer has said that his comments about Google have been exaggerated and he has never thrown a chair in his life. However, a legal document maintains he said "F****** Eric Schmidt is a f****** p****. I'm going to f****** bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f****** kill Google."

03. The video evidence is most compelling though. Like this one from the Microsoft MIX 2008 conference, where a sweaty Ballmer responds to a question by shouting 'web developers' a total of fourteen times.

02. Or how about the latest Barmy Ballmer video to surface, this time at the Microsoft Life Without Walls promo site. In it Ballmer enthusiastically shouts "I AM A PC AND I LOVE THIS COMPANY!"

01. But the number one reason to ready the rubber room and get the soft fruit out has to be the infamous Dance Monkeyboy video. 45 seconds of sheer Ballmer lunacy including screeching, screaming and hopping around like a monkey, on stage, at a Microsoft employee convention.