8.59am: We're here at the LSE writing about Steve Ballmer, who is giving a speech entitled "Seizing the Opportunity of the Cloud: the Next Wave of Business Growth"
We're already about half an hour in (so that my battery wouldn't die - LSE has dispensed with power sockets in its lecture theatre).
So far Ballmer has given a brief outline of how IT has developed. He sounds like someone who is constantly straining to make his voice heard in a crowded noisy room. But he also looks less bulky than one might expect.
9.02am: UK is a country where there's early adoption of tech - which is part of why the Move software for Xbox will be launched here first.
These are terrible slides. He's no Steve Jobs.
...and now he's finished his speech. Eh? I thought we were in for an hour's disposition. Nope, half an hour of vague stuff was all.
9.04am: Reuters asks what makes Microsoft's cloud good. Computer Weekly asks ...."I was once at an event where you were introduced as Bill Gates.."
"We look alike," Ballmer says.
Stuxnet - is that something that heralds a new threat? (We suspect Ballmer hasn't heard of it.)
"I love where we are in the cloud. On the business side feel like we are ahead of whoever the closest second rival is. Where we are v the other competitors...
"On the platform side, Windows Azure, we have competitors like Amazon, and who are doing only the private cloud like Oracle." No mention of the G-word.
9.06am: "On the consumer side we have opportunities to improve our market share... [still no G-oogle word]... and the Kinect stuff... cloud, TV connectivity thing, it's really early, but if you look at what you can do with an Xbox this holiday it's ahead of our competitors."
Pause.
"Oh. Stuxnet."
Pause.
"The degree to which inevitably society commits to the back end infrastructure is a big deal. We can all do a great job respecting privacy.. there will be bad guys in the world.. we need to design infrastructures.. that we get the same sort of protection ... that people expect in the prior world. That isn't going to be easy, and certainly we're hard at work at it.
"As our nation states work against this... don't expect government harmonisation on this any time soon." [Don't think he knows what it is yet.]
9.09am: Colleague in the press says: "I don't understand a bloody word he says."
What's his favourite Xbox game? Ballmer into his element. "BEACH VOLLEYBALL BABY!!!" he yells. "My kids would tel you, THAT'S A LOT OF AIR UNDER YOUR FEET DADDY!"
9.10am: Complicated question from a student (they always are - students need to learn how to ask direct questions a la Paxman) about how technology will help people at the bottom of the economic pile.
"This will drive productivity, advance.. the size of the world's pie will be expanded by what we're doing... most of what I've talked about has the prospect both of helping people at the bottom of the economic pyramid and has the potential of making technology more affordable not less... because don't have to build proprietary infrastructure for each process."
9.12am: The Register asks if the operating system is dead. Goldman Sachs downgraded you. What does it mean for Windows 8. And his view on Chrome OS - Google's operating system.
"What? His what? It what?" Ballmer plays with her.
I ask: you talk about cloud computing, but you've lost a pile of money in Online Services. Can you make money from it, and can it replace any lost revenue in the cloud?
9.14am: Ballmer: "how are we doing? Pretty darn good. Could be better... we're going to make about $26bn in profit pre tax, only one company does better..
"We're making money in our online services, except in our search service we have made very deliberate decision to invest for the long run, if you believe that it's the right thing to do, we had a round in the early 2000s people were saying it was wrong to do the Xbox, I don't think it was wrong.
"Does that mean there aren't things we could have done differently.. will we have more competition.. of course. If you're in a business with cool things happening, of course you'll have competition."
..."In terms of how the IT business is made up by our count there's 20-25m people who work directly somehow in the IT business, in a vendor or IT department of a company. There's maybe 10-15% whose jobs will be automated in new ways as a consequence of the move to the cloud.
"On the other hand most IT shops have a backlog of things they want to build that is super long. [Bill Gates-ism, that 'super-' prefix.]"
9.18am: "What's your take on tablet computing and the cloud and the growth of Android in the cloud and how it's hindering the growth of Windows in this area?" (Student question. Ask structured questions, folks. That's how you get the useful answers.)
Another question: "....strategy... competition... operating systems..."
Another question from someone who says he's a "patent lawyer and a judge": "does the patent system help or hinder you, and with the cloud with all companies having different bits will it get in the way?"
Ballmer takes the last first: "Real good question." (It is.) "Is the patent system perfect - it's not. We think patent law ought to be reformed to reflect modern times. In general are we better with today's patent or none, we're better with today's. Patent reform needs to be taken up on this side and the US, but getting rid of the patent system in some way would not impede technological progress."
"There's ways you want to weed out frivolous innovation... there's negotiation between substandard companies, not extralegally, where companies try to work these things through privately; I believe the small inventor should have a seat at the table, some companies feel under the gun, but they should.
"Patent reform should be taken up because the pharma business and the IT, software business, neither existed when patent law was written, and there is reform which could help it do more than it could.
"And this is from a company that's paid more out than we've taken in licensing patents."
9.23am: E-government and savings: "the fundamental advance that will help the UK government and others save money is the automation of tasks that today take labour.
"We have been a force for price reduction, but that misses the big picture: software helps automate things that people do and reduce the hardware that it requires, because both those are bigger in the food chain in terms of costs."
9.24am: On phones and tablets: "we're going to be able to afford to have phones and tablets in our pocket. Big screens are great for a big demo - we saw that with the Kinect demo.
"On the pocket side, we got an early jump, we've got competition that I'm ... not happy about, but we've got competion. It's my belief that with Windows Phone people are going to say 'wow', yesterday a kid wanted to take a picture of me with ONE OF OUR COMPETITORS PHONES and I told him he could have a free Xbox if he got RID OF THAT UGLY PHONE and got one of our PRETTY phones." [Getting the hang of the Ballmer EMPHASES now. They leap out at you.]
"The people typing on a keyboard look happier... than those aren't.. I can tell you how many computers, how many Macs, how many iPads..
"You'll see slates, but if you want most of the benefits of what a PC can offer, creating, a form factor that has been tuned over years, you'll see us expand the footprint of what Windows can target..
"But we have to get back into phones.. and I love my Windows Phone 7."
9.27am: Chinese student question: why has piracy? become such a problem in China but not India? And which is a bigger threat in the future - blocking, or piracy?
Another question: what's his take on privacy issues relating to cloud computing?
Final question: what would it take to bring about the demise of Microsoft?
Ballmer: "I'M GOING TO START WITH THE THIRD QUESTION!!!"
9.29am: Ballmer: "The demise of Microsoft would require our complicit behaviour because we'd not be getting our job done. Companies' futures are in their own hands but they're not assured.
"We gotta invent, we gotta create, we gotta do new things. Because our past can be a help and a hindrance."
[Believe me, this is far better than the lecture. That was dull.]
"We can see companies almost disappear and then burst back.. I put Apple in that category..
"I kinda like what we're doing. That's about as good a job as I can do of not answering your question."
9.31am: Privacy: Ballmer says "We built something into Internet Explorer so that you could browse privately... it was a little controversial inside Microsoft when we did it, and there's a whole ecosystem on the web that's not happy about.
"My privacy I care a lot about. I gave you my email address (steveb@microsoft.com, if you're interested) but I'm not going to be your friend on Facebook.
"My son, he's 15, he doesn't care much about his privacy, but he wants something back for giving it away - he says 'why don't they just pay me $25 per month, they can track me everywhere'."
9.33am: On privacy still: "It's got to be a contract with the user."
Piracy: "Piracy in China is 8 times worse than in India, 20 times worse than in UK. Enforcement of the law needs to be stepped up. If you look at the environment there's a lot more than in India, in Russia.
"I think the Chinese government hears the message, it's more of a problem for Chinese companies - they need to have IP, it's to the disadvantage even more of the Chinese companies. It woudl be worth a lot to us; China is the No.2 market in the world, will be the No.1 market in the world soon for smartphones and PCs.
"Don't know how you'd control it.
"As you move to the cloud there will be regulations coming from the government, and that could be a problem, I'm a little nervous about that, particularly in the Chinese case, but you'll have to wait and see how it works out."
9.35am: ..winding up now. Apparently he's going to get an LSE baseball cap. He looks like the perfect Little League father.
And we're done. Well, it was interesting, at least on patents - and China.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion