Ballmer ‘coopetition’ rant
p2p news / p2pnet: One of p2pnet’s most treasured videos is of Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer in full rant mode raving to an audience of hypnotized Microsoftees.
In a replay, 7,000 people at a Boston conference centre had all convened for the Ballmer experience and, “He’s amazing, they say,” says The Register’s Mark Ballard, “inspirational. Might he lay on hands? Actually, he’s more like a second rate stand-in on a television shopping channel. He would do well selling replacements to old age pensioners with rickety hearing aids. He shouts. When the crowd gives him applause, he starts to screech.”
And an “African children’s” gospel choir sang the words of a new Microsoft catch phrase, “I am here,” says the post, going on:
“The idea was that everyone was here to partner. Only Microsoft doesn’t call it partnering anymore. It’s called ‘coopetition’ which means it will compete for its partner’s business even as it preaches to them about trust and responsibility.”
Bill and the Boyz were setting up a “Partner Council”, Ballard has Ballmer saying, the idea being to, “discuss what form their new contracts of business would take under the new philosophy.
“Much of this was necessary because of the ‘Live’ suite of services Microsoft was delivering direct over the wire. So, for example, its resellers might get referral fees for scraps of business they sacrificed to its Live project.
“Partners had aired concerns before the conference of Microsoft’s dabblings in the direct selling of services. Not that they were too bothered. Ballmer appeared to placate them easily with the promise that Microsoft took its ‘trust and responsibility’ toward their welfare seriously.
He reassured them that this was the ‘most amazing year of product innovation’ that Microsoft has seen, possibly, ‘in all time’; told them how they should ‘work together’, then reminded them how they’d always been complaining that Microsoft was eating their babies, but their whining would be unnecessary if they simply ‘embraced change’, or put up with it and found something else to do with their time – or cooperate with Microsoft’s competition.”
Digg this.
Also See:
The Register – Tunnel of death interrupts Ballmer, July 11, 2006
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