SJ Mercury: Microsoft’s Ballmer won’t consider possibility of break

[ Thanks to George
Mitchell for this link. ]

“No way, no how, because Ballmer and his colleagues, starting
with the company’s famous co-founder and chairman, Bill Gates, are
the truest of believers in their fundamental rightness. They aren’t
even making contingency plans for a breakup, Ballmer insisted.”

“With every fiber of his being, Steve Ballmer knows — knows —
it would be a public disaster of unprecedented proportion if
Microsoft was forced to split into pieces. And he’s just
flabbergasted that some of us don’t grasp this.”

“Along with the standard-issue defense of Microsoft’s ethics and
business practices, topics on which we have long agreed to
disagree, Ballmer offered what he plainly believed was a compelling
reason not to do anything so drastic as a breakup. Simply put,
the technology users of the world need Microsoft, because it takes
a company of this size, talent, direction, patience and deep
pockets to solve some kinds of problems and invent some kinds of
products.“

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