WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS
The lead story on memeorandum this minute (6:56pm EST) is a Business Week story cryptically titled "Microsoft's Enterprising Endeavor". You click on it expecting to find some bold new initiative by the company on the enterprise front, and what do you get?
Why, it's a CEO Steve Ballmer-driven jumbo PR junket for Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista related products, both operating system and applications. BusinessWeek obligingly goes along with copy like:
"Microsoft (MSFT ) Chief Executive Steven Ballmer on Mar. 16 laid out his vision of an expanded role for his company in the $1 trillion business-computing market. Microsoft, he says, is the enabler of "people-ready" business.
Ballmer's pronouncements were reminiscent of Yankee baseball slugger Babe Ruth standing in the batter's box and pointing to the place in center field where he planned to hit a home run."
This follows a similar Bill Gates is on in support of Microsoft's upcoming products as well, which lead to the "mocking" comment I talked about yesterday.
The best comment that put all this in perspective for me came from "CynicalGeek", who cut to the heart of the matter in a comment to yesterday's post:
"He's just out there selling Windows Vista licenses early this year. He's completely off base in his comments, but it might as well be an election year for Gates."
Touche and True that.
It puts everything in perspective, from mocking $100 computers for knowledge-starved kids, to creating a faux WWW-style wrestling match on the Enterprise markets in the media with IBM, to politicians from both sides of the aisle foaming at the mouth against the Dubai ports deal, because well, they're listening to the "will of their people".
It's silly season for both Microsoft and the US Congress, and we might as well get used to it. It's going to play for the rest of the year.
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