So glad I have no MSFT shares. Over the last 5 years they have underperformed the nasdaq by a good margin, in fact a 5 year CD purchased in 03 would have provided a better return. Ballmer is a total idiot, I wonder if Microsoft investors and the board are so disconnected with the company that they just do not care. MSFT pays a poor yield, they are still in debt from the Xbox investments (it will take years if any real returns are to be expected) They missed out on the mp3 phenomena (ipods) They squandered 5+ years to get Vista to the market and the reception has been poor so far, they fail to capture the consumers imagination like Apple seems to be doing. And now Ballmer wants to take on debt so he can go and attempt a hostile takeover of Yahoo. Which I strongly suspect will really hurt Microsoft not help in the next 5 years. Overall why is it that Microsoft shareholders and the board seem to sit like mimes while they suffer from an erosion of their investment.
Yeah it's very interesting. These guys were on top of their game back in the Win9x days up until sometime after XP was launched. Apple has them on the mp3 and cellphone thing. Firefox is slowly taking back marketshare in the browser arena. Vista is a big steamy pile of you know what. And I'm a PC guy, not an apple guy! Oh, I forgot to mention Google. It's hilarious that a little search engine is killing them right now.
As a fan of MSFT in the 90s, I have to say you are right on their current situation. Chasing a declining company like yahoo is a serious error in judgement. Yahoo does not equal google. Look at Time-Warner and the AOL deal.
It's those company originators, their personalities, Gates is sort of a numb nuts autistic guy isn't he? Those kind of people have an effect on people around them, maybe he made the board members a little weird over the years... I've never liked Yahoo or Microsoft, maybe they can join up and sail off the back edge of the world together........
The thing with Yahoo! is I don't think they ever got worse like MS did. I just see Google coming in a lot better and Yahoo! is having trouble keeping up. Microsoft on the other hand.....
lol interesting. I forgot the iPhone, I mean Microsoft spent so many years and man hours trying to come up with an operating environment for small computing devices and they get scalped by iphone which came out of no where. I suspect the company is too fat and there is so many fiefdoms and politics that they are slowly choking themselves. Someone needs to go there and start shaking things up.
Honestly I think they should've kept XP as a base. Kinda like Apple did with OS 10 when it came out. And release little upgrades here and there that adds a lot of cool new features. They could've done that with XP instead of totally revamping it into the crap Vista came to be. Long term I guess they'd need a replacement eventually but XP could've lasted another several years IMO.
The Microsoft guys took down the IBM guys years ago the same way they are getting taken down now. Little guys can always come out of nowhere and broadside a lumbering behemoth. Microsoft tried web content....... nothing much happened, they tried being innovative....... ehhhhhh... they are just too big to be the old Microsoft and it will take a long time for them to completely turn into a GE.
You all have to realize that Microsoft has NEVER innovated or created anything new. It was either bought out, copied or stolen. So is there any surprise? Gates hinted that the company was past its prime years ago. At the end of the day, the CEO, board of directors and executives could not care less what you or the shareholders or the analysts think. MSFT still holds a tight stranglehold on the PC market and still has tons of cash. As long as the CEO, BoD and executives are getting their salaries & bonuses, it's all good. And they are milking it big time. So what is your point, the stock is no good? Well duh, that should have been obvious a long long time ago.