Ballmer sees Google, Apple and open source as main competitors

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 18:01

Opinion and Analysis

In an exceptionally frank interview with BusinessWeek, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed himself to be on unsteady ground when it came to valuing the new Web 2.0 companies. However, he was crystal clear on where Microsoft can expect to get serious competition.

After humming and hahing as to whether YouTube was worth US$1.65 billion or Facebook is worth US$1 billion and ruefully discussing how Microsoft got outbid on MySpace, Ballmer got down to tin tacks and named Microsoft's main competitors. Obviously a US$40 billion a year software company is not going to be scared too easily by another software company.

However, Ballmer sees Microsoft's main competitors as the paradigm shifters - the companies attacking Microsoft from outside its traditional market space. Namely Google, Apple and the open source software movement.

According to Ballmer, open source is a new business model that Microsoft has learned to cope with by adding extra functionality or - as he put it - "extending our value". However, Ballmer admitted that open source will continue to be a thorn in Microsoft's side and that the giant software company will be forced to compete with it "for the rest of time".

Ballmer was loathe to name Google as the second major threat to Microsoft's business, preferring to label the competition as advertising. However, he admitted that the market equates the online advertising model with Google.

As Ballmer says, advertising looks cheaper to the consumer that paying for software, so Microsoft intends to embrace (read copy) the Google model. How Microsoft intends to do this without butchering Microsoft's existing business model, Ballmer didn't say.