Articles about Steve Ballmer

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has denied allegations that the company acquiesced to pressure from a local religious leader to abandon its support of a Washington State gay rights bill.

In an e-mail to 50,000 employees, Ballmer insisted that a decision to remain neutral was made after much "soul searching" about the role corporations should play in social issues. He added that Microsoft is better suited to advocate its positions only when issues more directly related to its business were being considered by the state.

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At Microsoft's Asian Government Leaders Forum in Singapore, CEO Steve Ballmer told attendees that Linux violates over 228 patents, and "somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property," according to Reuters. Company representatives later toned down the statement to Microsoft Watch, but not before uproar from the open source community claimed Microsoft is using scare tactics to sell its products. Microsoft says Ballmer was simply citing a recent Open Source Risk Management report.

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At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans on Thursday, CEO Steve Ballmer lauded the company's efforts to protect its customers and lock down Windows. Through its "Protect Your PC" campaign, Microsoft will begin improving patch distribution, institute global education programs and develop new safety technologies.

Ballmer announced that Microsoft was endeavoring to improve the patch experience throughout its product lines. As previously reported by BetaNews, Windows Installer (MSI) 3.0 and Software Update Services 2.0 will work in tandem to reduce complexity, lower the need for system reboots by 30 percent, introduce rollback capabilities, and include new processes for patch distribution and manageability.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday unveiled a new Office application, code-named "XDocs," designed to ease the collection of data by using XML-based forms within documents. XDocs will resemble a traditional word processor, but allow customers to create dynamic forms to capture information using a pre-defined XML schema, which can then be easily organized and shared.

"What this means is that the customer defines the overall structure of the information that will be gathered from the XDocs template, and what type of content each data element will contain," said Jean Paoli, Microsoft's XML architect behind XDocs. "Being able to define your own schema is a critical business advantage, because no one knows what kind of information your company needs to gather better than you do."

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Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp. today handed over his title of chief executive
officer to company president, Steve Ballmer.

Gates, recalling that Microsoft was founded 20 years ago, said the
company has made a number of changes over the past few years to
position itself for a future in which software will be delivered
over a host of new devices other than personal computers.

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