While this isn’t exactly breaking news, it’s news—and funny—none the less. In the latest issue of Vanity Fair (the one with Alec Baldwin on the cover), there’s a new expose´ on Microsoft and how they’ve basically fallen behind the rest of the industry, it even goes as far as to compare the software giant with Sears (ouch!). Basically outlining how the Redmond company at one point was almost cool and now, it’s in third place behind Apple and Google who pretty control the technology and mobile space.
While there’s plenty to the article, you can read more on it at BetaBeat, the highlight of the piece is when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer goes ape in 2004 on then Google CEO Eric Schmidt. When a engineer at Microsoft told Ballmer he was leaving for Google, Ballmer apparently threw a chair, then blasted off with this statement (Warning: Explicit Language):
“Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy!” Ballmer yelled, according to the court document. “I’m going to fucking bury that guy! I have done it before and I will do it again. I’m going to fucking kill Google.”
It looks like it wasn’t just Steve Jobs that was pissed at Schmidt and Google. While we don’t know all the reasons why Ballmer yelled those expletives, apparently losing valued employees to the search giant was in fact one of them.