“Microsoft announced a sweeping shake-up of its executive ranks Thursday, placing new executives over operations facing fierce new competition from Google, Apple and cellphone makers,” Saul Hansell and John Markoff report for The New York Times.
“The announcements were part of a broad management reorganization involving seven new senior vice presidents and seven new corporate vice presidents,” Hansell and Markoff report. “One of the more significant leadership changes was in the cellphone operations. Andy Lees was named senior vice president for mobile communications operations. Mr. Lees, who had overseen the server business, succeeds Pieter Knook, who, the company said, ‘made the decision to leave Microsoft to pursue other opportunities.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, right. Probably wants “to spend more time with his family,” too.
Hansell and Markoff continue, “Microsoft has been paying more attention to its cellphone business following the introduction of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android software operating system. In only a few months of the iPhone’s release, according to Canalys, a market research firm, Apple gained 28 percent of the smartphone market in the United States, a greater share of the market than the cellphones using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software.”
“The other major change was the replacement of Steve Berkowitz, the current senior vice president of Microsoft’s Online Services group,” Hansell and Markoff report. “Mr. Berkowitz, the former chief executive of the online site Ask Jeeves, was hired with great fanfare in April 2006 to help revive Microsoft’s search and portal operations. Microsoft has been unable to make a dent in Google’s growing dominance in search and search advertising. Mr. Berkowitz will leave the company this August, the company said.”
More on which deck chairs are being rearranged here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” (no, not that Bill) for the heads up.]
A fish rots from the head down.
Haha. Why isn’t Ballmer moved down? They really need to get rid of him.
Does anyone around here really believe that that either the old or new VPs at MSoft really feel any threat whatsoever from Steve Jobs’ hardware, his OS, or his software?
If you do, please cite some actual reference to your belief other than the Mac having captured another fraction of a percentage point of the world wide market the two companies are competiting for?
Ballmer spent the morning eating all of their leftover lunches from the executive breakroom refrigerator.
Are you crazy? We need him there to keep making boneheaded decisions, keep the company on its self destructive path AND to keep us Mac users entertained.
NO, NO, NO ericdano, leave Monkey Boy where he is. He probably has the final say on any changes that are requested by the new guys. If he can’t understand “old” ideas, what makes you think new ones will penetrate??
No, no, no, no! Ballmer stays put right where we want him – at the helm of this sinking ship MS Micro$haft. Captains leave their wreck last, remember? Better yet, go down withe it!
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You have to Ask Yourself,
Did you read the article?
Half a percentage point of market share?
….lessseee here….blah blah blah… in only a few months since the iPhone was released, ….28 percent market share…. More than Windows Mobil…. hmmm. half a percent? 28? no threat?
Yeah, you have to ask yourself if MS executives feel any threat. Clearly they don’t…. Hence, they are spending more time with their families…
What? No jokes about deck chairs flying across the room?
I don’t understand why the shareholders of MSFT don’t demand MonkeyBoy’s dismissal.
Knook, knook, knook!
@Ask Yourself
It’s all trends. Apple and Google are in an upward trend, Microsoft is in a downward trend. If you don’t believe me, then why o why do they feel the need to buy Yahoo and the other cell phone company that I can’t remember their name.
Ask yourself?
It’s a marketing ploy. These new people are loss leaders.
Web developers should read this BS:
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/archives/2007/01/microsoft_takes_email_design_b.html
Thank GOD they haven’t got rid of Ballmer.
Monkey Boy is by far Apple’s best weapon against Micro$oft. ; )
That last posting from PC Mag on MDN is the final straw for Ballmer. How do you recover from that? You don’t.
You rebuild from the ground up.
Holy crap, Bill. That is truly sad for Windows users.
“Outlook 2007, released next month, will stop using Internet Explorer to render HTML emails and instead use the crippled Microsoft Word rendering engine.”
Let’s look at facts here..MS stold the technology for Windows from Apple and Xerox. There strength was in the commercialzation process not in product development. When a company gets as big as MS it has trouble innivating and I believe that why Vista took 5 years and billions of dollars to develop. They strongly need to decentralize and let the cutting edge developers go to a building way off campus where they can have the freedom to innovate without corporate beaurcracy. Gates was a driver of a lot of their products but when made his fortune he seemed to let go and that was a huge mistake.
BTW, Ballmer owns so much MS stock he could run naked through the building covered in his own excrement while setting people on fire and the board would just sigh, “Oh, that silly Steve is up to his wild shenanigans again!”
RE: Ask Yourself
Evidence that Microsoft fears Apple? Zune and Vista. They are trying to imitate Apple. The sad thing is how incredibly sucky they are at it. You can Google your own references! Lazy Microsoft fanboy can’t even look up their own unique references.
Hey Baldmer: I’d personally like to see you “spend more time with the family”. But really, if you stay, it will be MicroSoft Stool’s demise that much sooner………..
@Ampar
If OL 07 is going to start using MS Word format for sending out, we may have big problems trying to read those emails. I’m guessing here, maybe you know, but I sure hope we all don’t start getting these “maildat” all over the place…
Good! Maybe some of these ‘enterprise’ tossers will stop sending out HTML emails. That would be progress…
The best way to get a job at Google is to work at Microsoft.
Sorry, that should have been @bill (re MS changing outlook’s html)
“Microsoft rearranges the deck chairs”
translation: Ballmer’s throwing chairs again!
Sorry, that was too easy.