Interview with Mr Ballmer – interesting stuff

There is a nice recap of an interview that MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer gave last week at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley on Seeking Alpha. This is worth a quick read – it will only take 7 mins. During the Q&A Mr Ballmer let a few “zingers” fly:

Ballmer also let off a few zingers in the Q&A session.

• One attendee complained about the unreliability of Windows – Ballmer said he’d fix his computer himself after the talk before giving a more serious answer.
• When asked about advertising supported websites, Ballmer stated that there are very few sites that can run their business on advertising alone today. He used Facebook (a Microsoft partner) as an example, and said there was still a lot of work to be done there to figure out monetization.
• In response to one question about education, Ballmer said he thought we weren’t doing enough to teach our children about computer science, and that computer programming knowledge should be a requirement for high school graduation.

I have to say, I agree about the ad model not being able to support everything online! He also made an interesting remark about advertising software (or technology). The tech area is one MSFT is doing some great stuff in and a space that appears to be out of fashion while a lot other companies (YHOO, AOL, Fox Interactive) are focused on media and ad networks.

There is still a lot of upside that will come from ad technology that is then applied in smart ways to solve business digital advertising problems (inventory mgt, optimization, automation, etc). And IMHO the tech side will not ultimately be dominated by Google – this is where publishers can take back control. Man, I’ve got to find time to work on my ‘RISK’ thought piece outlining how to win as a publisher vs. GOOG. Next time I am at the beach.