I think it would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible for anyone to try and break up Microsoft.
Microsoft has a monopoly over the desktop operating systems.
Bill Gates finds people in Russia to hire them to Microsoft. That's the Russian interest in this process.
Early versions of Microsoft Word left a lot to be desired. However, to the company's credit, it quickly learned where Word fell short, made the necessary changes, and repeatedly introduced new versions of the software.
Well we have a good working relationship with Microsoft at the development level. But let's not kid ourselves, this is a company with enormous resources and talented people, and there is a certain pride that comes along with that for them and for us.
The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.
I always say that my favorite game was Original Adventure, published by both Microsoft and Apple Computer back in 1980.
Over the near term there is clearly the opportunity to work with Microsoft to do to a better job of creating a more secure Windows experience for users around the world.
Oracle, for example, has even hired people to dumpster dive for information about its competitor, Microsoft. It's not even illegal, because trash isn't covered by data secrecy laws.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the Obamacare tech nightmare is how wholly predictable it all was. Anyone who has been involved in building the most rudimentary of web operations knows nothing ever works as it's supposed to. Even awesome Apple, mighty Microsoft, and gargantuan Google miss deadlines.
I'm just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell.
Facebook collects a lot of data from people and admits it. And it also collects data which isn't admitted. And Google does too. As for Microsoft, I don't know. But I do know that Windows has features that send data about the user.
Traditional PCs face competition from specialty products like Palm Pilots and from the servers that provide the nodes in computer networks. Microsoft's Windows CE hasn't done too well in the specialty-device market, and its Windows NT faces strong competition for server customers.
I think reconceptualizing Microsoft as a devices and services company is absolutely what our vision is all about. Office 365 and Azure on the services side are representative of it.
I think Microsoft will have to change. I think that the business of Microsoft, the company of Microsoft, is going to continue to succeed. But I think the business model of Microsoft is going to have to change.
This paradox of vision - the genius of youthful ignorance - is nothing new. Had Bill Gates not been in diapers in the early days of computer software, he might have understood that there could never be a market for consumer software - but the 19-year-old Gates went ahead and cofounded Microsoft.
Grassroots techies - the mostly unknown people who write code and start companies that don't make the headlines - hate, loathe, and despise Microsoft. At technology conferences, it is the devil, or the guaranteed laugh line. Its products are mocked, its business practices booed.
Microsoft has tried to do a lot of things in search... thrown a lot of money. But nothing they have done has worked at all.
Well Microsoft really does develop some really interesting technology.
When I walk into a Best Buy, I now see, right from the front door, a giant Apple logo. I see a giant Samsung logo. I see a giant Microsoft Windows logo. And those are stores within a store.
Microsoft's culture is very strong.
When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.
Microsoft was not a mysterious, strange entity. You put your PC on and there's an ad for them.
Look at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. They have all entered many sectors, and actually, in many of those sectors, they weren't as early as Tencent.
Microsoft is a much bigger company than Qualcomm - a much bigger company - and there were a few days where I thought, 'I don't know if I can do this. It's huge.' My job was to come into the company and grow new businesses, and I thought, 'I'm not sure,' but it's all worked out pretty well.
The fact is... our doors have not exactly been knocked down by companies willing to defend Microsoft's business practices.
I thought Microsoft did a lot of things that were good and right building parts of the browser into the operating system. Then I thought it out and came up with reasons why it was a monopoly.
At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right.
My dad's a biophysicist. My brother is a computer guy. His wife works at Microsoft.
I spent almost 25 years at Qualcomm before joining Microsoft, so in a sense, I grew up at one company. During that time, I made a very big shift from the engineering side to the business side.
I have spoken to a whole group of millionaires, head executives at Microsoft. Boy did I chew those guys out.
Seattle was hardly a tech magnet before Amazon, Microsoft, and then a host of once-fledgling technology firms set up operations there.
As you know, Microsoft eventually kind of grabbed the gold ring out of Apple's hands, I guess.
Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet - basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
Technology ventures can succeed with very little investment, unlike many other industries. A lot of the big Internet players like Google or Yahoo were started by a couple of guys with computers. Microsoft was started in Bill Gates' garage.
Microsoft is committed to the ubiquity of the Skype experience - communication across every device and every platform will remain a primary focus.