Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Addresses Google & Yahoo! Issues
Thursday, July 24, 2008JEFF YASTINE: Microsoft held its annual meeting with financial analysts in Redmond, Washington today. And in last week's tech talk, New York bureau chief Scott Gurvey said there were two overriding questions Wall Street wanted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to answer. Scott monitored the meeting's webcast and spoke with some of the analysts who were there and has this report.
SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: There were two questions analysts expected Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to address in today's meeting and in his own fashion, he did. At the top of everybody's list: what is Microsoft's online strategy now that attempts to buy Yahoo! have ended? Just last night, Microsoft announced the executive behind that plan is leaving the company. That left Ballmer to explain how Microsoft will compete with Google. Ballmer made it clear he will continue an aggressive online strategy, a business segment now losing a billion dollars a year for Microsoft. Ballmer said Internet media, communications and advertising could eventually become a trillion dollar business.
STEVE BALLMER, CEO, MICROSOFT: If we want to create shareholder value, we need to run the businesses that we're in very well. But there's this huge, huge, huge new opportunity around the Internet and online and we have to embrace that opportunity and invest in that opportunity.
GURVEY: Along those lines, Microsoft is expanding its deal to provide web and search advertising to facebook, the social networking site. On the subject of Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system, Ballmer insisted progress has been made in improving the product. He acknowledged that Apple is gaining market share but criticized its Macintosh computer.
BALLMER: We're kind of being attacked from a single competitor with a point of view that's much more closed and offers much less choice, that's much more narrow. And yet we have to tell our story and you'll hear more about that versus where Apple's coming from.
GURVEY: Ballmer also addressed the issue of Microsoft's share price, which has been stagnant for eight years, by defending the company's earnings growth rate as something most companies would envy. He suggested to the analysts present that Microsoft deserved a better multiple. Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.
