Steve Ballmer

Android is a piece of the search trick.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Lead generation for search. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Lead generation for search. Yeah, that's right.

Look, my biggest hit from my time running sales to president to CEO is establishing us with IT departments, IT professionals. You can call that the enterprise, if you will, and putting in the framework from a sales and marketing perspective, the staff. It's a capability we had to develop. Nobody developed that software model but us. We invented essentially how you do that.

Look, my biggest hit from my time running sales to president to CEO is establishing us with IT departments, IT professionals. You can call that the enterprise, if you will, and putting in the framework from a sales and marketing perspective, the staff. It's a capability we had to develop. Nobody developed that software model but us. We invented essentially how you do that.

Oracle had done some invention, but we came on and did our own invention. We took it to the cloud. We were able to successfully navigate that with, I mean, look, from a sales, there's a product parts of that that you highlight, but that's a big deal. And I feel very, very proud about that. From a financial standpoint, Everybody likes to say about tripled revenue and about tripled profit.

Oracle had done some invention, but we came on and did our own invention. We took it to the cloud. We were able to successfully navigate that with, I mean, look, from a sales, there's a product parts of that that you highlight, but that's a big deal. And I feel very, very proud about that. From a financial standpoint, Everybody likes to say about tripled revenue and about tripled profit.

The truth is we dramatically increased profit more than a triple. Because people forget there was a major change that came along early in my tenure. And that's the move to have to expense stock options. So if you had restated our books to the time I actually took over, stock option expense would have reduced profits notably. stock options were unaccounted for.

The truth is we dramatically increased profit more than a triple. Because people forget there was a major change that came along early in my tenure. And that's the move to have to expense stock options. So if you had restated our books to the time I actually took over, stock option expense would have reduced profits notably. stock options were unaccounted for.

So if you look at what starting profitability would have looked like if stock options had, it would have been lower. And the multiple over my tenure would have been much more than three. Okay.

So if you look at what starting profitability would have looked like if stock options had, it would have been lower. And the multiple over my tenure would have been much more than three. Okay.

I think you might say three in revenue and probably closer to four plus five, maybe even on profit. About the same time, the dot-com bubble busts. So you have two problems. Number one, now we're showing our books all this expense for stock options. Okay. But people don't value those things, what we have to expense. And the stock is flat, so they value them even less.

I think you might say three in revenue and probably closer to four plus five, maybe even on profit. About the same time, the dot-com bubble busts. So you have two problems. Number one, now we're showing our books all this expense for stock options. Okay. But people don't value those things, what we have to expense. And the stock is flat, so they value them even less.

This is a really insidious problem. You got to get rid of stock options. And we transition then from stock options to stock awards. Which, if you notice, I think we were the first to make that as a major transition, but everybody's made the same transition. With the exception of a few senior executives, options are not the primary form of compensation.

This is a really insidious problem. You got to get rid of stock options. And we transition then from stock options to stock awards. Which, if you notice, I think we were the first to make that as a major transition, but everybody's made the same transition. With the exception of a few senior executives, options are not the primary form of compensation.

Little different in startups, but when you look at larger companies, everybody's- Even startups are now doing RSUs. RSUs. And we had to start that. I didn't realize that Microsoft started that. You can check, but-

Little different in startups, but when you look at larger companies, everybody's- Even startups are now doing RSUs. RSUs. And we had to start that. I didn't realize that Microsoft started that. You can check, but-

The dot-com bubble bursting meant our stock price bursted too.

The dot-com bubble bursting meant our stock price bursted too.

No, we had two problems. Before the dot-com bubble bursted, You have everybody saying, oh, maybe we should go to a dot-com company because we're going to make a lot more money. Then the bubble bursts, and everybody says, you know, I'm underwater on my options. We haven't seen the movie Oklahoma, but there's a song. Poor Judd is dead. Poor Judd is dead. Absolutely.