Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Steve Ballmer Praises Exiting Sinofsky, Says Microsoft “All-In” on Current Strategy

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer briefly addressed this week’s exit of Steven Sinofsky, praising the former Windows chief, and indicating that no major strategy shift is coming.

“From a strategy perspective we are ‘all-in’ on what we’ve done,” Ballmer said during a speech at the Churchill Club in Santa Clara, Calif.

Sinofsky, a 23-year veteran of the company, exited Microsoft on Monday, after what sources said were increasing concerns by Ballmer and others that Sinofsky was not the “team player” they were looking for going forward. In the press release announcing the changes, Ballmer referred to a need for “more integrated and rapid development cycles for our offerings.”

But Ballmer was all praise for Sinofsky on Wednesday.

“He’s made one of the most amazing contributions anyone will make to any company,” Ballmer said. “I wish him well. He’s always recommended if you make a change, you make it on a product boundary.”

And Ballmer said Sinofsky is now living that.

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald