42 Steve Ballmer Quotes

Steve Ballmer quotes

1. We've had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'.

2. Most people still steal music.

3. I think it would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible for anyone to try and break up Microsoft.

4. I have never, honestly, thrown a chair in my life.

5. I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

6. I don't really know that anybody's proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.

7. Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.

8. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google.

9. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.

10. DRM is the future.

11. We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.

12. We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we're in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There's no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.

13. Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards.

14. Bill Gates

1. I think PCs are going to continue to shift in form factor. The real question is: What's a PC?

2. There's a lot of Google fascination out there and we share it, and we're going to compete, we're going to compete very, very hard.

3. I’d like to own Microsoft shares until I either give something to charity or I die.

4. Every NBA arena has six cameras in the ceiling. The question is what does the software do with video feeds? How to surface that in a set of analytics? There are some "playbooks," but in most sports these days what you really want to share out with coaches and players is a set of video that lets you visualize what's going on and what's the best way to do things.

5. I think there are lots of opportunities to improve the product. When you read the press, people say, "Oh, the product needs improvement." I look at that and say, "Hey, that's an exciting thing to get behind!" Because they can improve that product. That leaves more upside from an innovation and revenue potential than you're gonna find in a lot of places. So you could say that's a downside, I see that as an opportunity.

6. The way I do things I usually always prefer to have a very clear strategy and be very focused. At the same time to be very rock solid, and crisp in execution.

7. Accessible design is good design.

8. At Microsoft I had many years of experience and history and seeing connections. With my direct reports, the job at Microsoft was to delegate and then be able to properly review, but not to micromanage. To have a way of connecting and integrating without getting in the way.

9. [Apple and RIM] are probably restricted, in some sense, to a certain maximum. ... If you want to reach more people than that, you sort-of have to separate the hardware and the software issue.

10. This is all about having great leaders who can drive agile innovation and agile decision-making.

11. I don't think there is one size that fits all [] I've been to too many meetings with journalists who spent the first 10 minutes of the meeting setting up iPad to look like a laptop.

12. In many ways I think the company's doing quite a good job. If you look at the transition to Office 365 we started when I was there, I'm excited about that and I think the company's doing a great job on that.

13. The lifeblood of our business is that R&D spend. There's nothing that flows through a pipe or down a wire or anything else. We have to continuously create new innovation that lets people do something they didn't think they could do the day before.

14. Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We'll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I'm very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.

15. I have four words for you: I love this company, yeah!

16. We're going to think big, we're going to bet big.

17. The one thing that I think separates Microsoft from a lot of other people is we make bold bets. We're persistent about them, but we make them. A lot of people won't make a bold bet. A bold bet doesn't assure you of winning, but if you make no bold bets you can't continue to succeed. Our industry doesn't allow you to rest on your laurels forever. I mean, you can milk any great idea. Any idea that turns out to be truly great can be harvested for tens of years. On the other hand, if you want to continue to be great, you've got to bet on new things, big, bold bets.

18. I loved every minute of my time at Microsoft, but I had always envisioned having another phase of life just because I thought that would be interesting. It had never been my plan to work until I literally didn't want to do anything and then hang it up.

19. A plane is a guilty pleasure. I have one. It's a great luxury. I appreciate it. I couldn't do what I do. It's not something you can write down as anything other than, "Wow, I can't believe I have this and I'm absolutely spoiled and entitled." On the other hand, I have one and I use it.

20. It actually turns out to be much harder to really understand government across state local and federal.

21. 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.

22. I love the fact that Satya Nadella's checked the checkbox for cross-platform for a number of our services. I still think it's very important to do the right kind of innovative integration across Windows and our hardware platforms with our cloud services. I think the company's doing a lot of good stuff. Real competition in AWS. Real competition in terms of the clients, particularly from a hardware perspective, there's also [competition] from Chrome. But all in all pretty good.

23. Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.

24. Our industry is going through quite a wave of innovation and it's being powered by a phenomenon which is referred to as the cloud.

25. The stock market has always had its own meter. Sometimes it's ahead of itself, sometimes it's behind itself. A broken watch is right twice a day.

26. We've grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.

27. Developers, developers, developers...

28. If the CEO doesn’t see the playing field, nobody else can. The team may need to see it too, but the CEO really needs to be able to see the entire competitive space.