It’s been almost 20 years since IBM’s Lou Gerstner got an elephant to dance. Now Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), one of the companies that forced IBM to confront its problems, finds itself in need of a new dance partner who understands the realities of 21st-century computing. Steve Ballmer is not that…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer and (a very quiet) soon-to-be Microsoft Skype division president Tony Bates went on CNBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) this morning to defend the rationale of the $8.5 billion acquisition. The bottom line: Microsoft believes its many products—from Hotmail to Xbox—can all benefit from tie-ins to the…

In Steve Ballmer’s keynote today, his first ever at Mobile World Congress, the CEO of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said that the new version of Windows Phone 7 will feature multitasking, a top-of-the-range mobile web browser and integration with Microsoft’s buzziest product of the moment: Xbox Kinect: in short, everything that…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) may have cracked the mobile code with its new Windows Phone 7 OS but it’s not quite there when it comes to actual consumer sales. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer didn’t say that specifically in his traditional pre-CES keynote, of course. After some announcements about pending updates, including…

If the reports are true that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is preparing to make big moves in the TV space, CEO Steve Ballmer wasn’t about to tip his hand at the company’s annual pre-CES keynote Wednesday. Aside from announcing the integration of its new Kinect system with Hulu Plus and Netflix…

Steve Ballmer started off his Consumer Electronics Show keynote Wednesday by running down Microsoft’s product debuts in 2010, including Windows Phone 7 and Kinect, and promising a preview of what Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has coming next. Read on for a summary of Microsoft’s announcements regarding Kinect, Windows Phone 7 and…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer said the words “mine” and “my” about two dozen times in two minutes when he took the stage this morning to officially unveil the company’s Windows 7 Phone at a press conference in New York. The smartphone operating system was built with two themes…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer is taking the stage at Microsoft’s analyst day to talk about the company’s consumer businesses, saying that “a lot of the issues we see in our consumer businesses are very much on the minds of the shareholders.” That’s an understatement, considering that the lackluster…

If you don’t like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), odds are you won’t find much to like when Steve Ballmer talks. If you like Microsoft, you probably still won’t and that’s a shame. The Microsoft CEO and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie opened the last day of D8. The latter owned the…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is still most closely associated with its desktop software (Windows, Office etc.), but on Thursday CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft was “betting our company” on the cloud. About 70 percent of Microsoft employees are working on cloud-related projects right now; that figure will reach 90 percent within…

Follow us on Twitter for continuous updates @paidContent here. »  Keynote started late, ends on abrupt odd note. Fails to hang together. Much like the concept/execute issues MSFT has so often. »  Bach: ‘relieve glory days of 70s’ this spring when Xbox Live adds virtual classic arcade games , buy…

Updated: The 18-month Microsoft-Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) saga finally enters a productive phase (regulators willing) with a 10-year global search and advertising sales pact between the two companies. The deal, much of which has already been reported, was announced formally before U.S. markets opened. Yahoo estimates that the deal will improve…

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) would not comment last week in the aftermath of Google’s announcement that it would launch a PC operating system by mid-2010—but CEO Steve Ballmer was more than happy to talk about it at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans Tuesday. “First of all, I will…

The deteriorating economy and cutback in consumer spending will hurt Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)—at least that’s the way MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer sees it. In a Q&A with BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Steve Adler at the McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MHP) Media Summit, Ballmer took aim at the iPod, iPhone and…

After discussing the state of the economy, Steve Adler, BusinessWeek’s editor-in-chief, opened day two of the McGraw-Hill Media Summit by asking Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer why doesn’t the company dominate search. Adler recalled talking with Bill Gates about six years ago about how the company planned to beat…

And so the Microsoft-*Yahoo* dance begins again ... *Microsoft* CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts at a strategic update/mid-year outlook presentation today that he still wanted to pursue some sort of search deal with *Yahoo*. According to ZDNet, Ballmer wants to find a way for the two companies to “pool their…

We’re in the not-as-crowded-as-usual ballroom at the Venetian where the first Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) keynote completely sans Bill Gates (well, he got a mention and some applause) is underway with Steve Ballmer on the stage. It only took a couple of minutes for a light-hearted jab at Yahoo’s Jerry Yang,…

In case you didn’t believe him the first 20 times, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer repeated today at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting that he has no intention of making another offer for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). Ballmer’s words, reported by MarketWatch: “Let me be as clear as I think…

Sorry, Jerry, a buyout’s not gonna happen. That’s the message MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer made clear at a business luncheon in Sydney, Reuters says. “We made an offer, we made another offer ... We moved on,“Ballmer said. “We tried at one point to do a partnership around search ... and…