We know that the first step to dealing with a problem is acknowledging you have one, so things are improving for everyone's favourite ape impersonator Steve Ballmer... otherwise known as the Microsoft chief executive.
Photograph: DBegley/Flickr/Some rights reserved
He said in a speech this week that it will take several more years and a lot more money for Microsoft to rival Google in search (which makes it sound like Google will be standing still for the next five years).
"We need to do some work to fundamentally reinvent the search business model," he said during a dinner at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley. "You don't brute-force your way into a market. You only make great strides when you redefine the category for the user."
"It's going to take us a while. We've got lots to do. Its a five-year task," he said. Ballmer added that to rival Google. Microsoft will need to redefine the search category and said the company has taken some steps in that direction; it recently told shareholders it was prepared to lose "5 to 10 percent of total operating income for several years" to improve its search product.
He also seemed to acknowledge Google's canny mobile strategy, saying that within five to ten year every one of the billion mobiles sold each year will be smartphones but insisted Microsoft's Windows Mobile is the most mature product in the market.
"Apple's a good company, I won't take anything away from them, but they have a certain kind of strategy. They believe in putting the hardware and software together, they don't believe in letting other people make it. I'm not saying there isn't a threat... but if we do our jobs right, there's really no reason Apple should get any footprint in the enterprise."
