Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer on the evolution of the Web

All I’m going to say is, I’m not entirely happy, but I can’t complain either. Steve Ballmer was in Milan yesterday at the Next Web Now! conference, and my goal was to get a picture next to him…not really the case. On the other hand, I was sitting on the second row right across from the podium. I sound like a groupie, don’t I?

Anyways, I’m sure there’s been a myriad posts proceeding his conference, I hope I don’t bore any of you with mine, but the only reason I’m writing something up is because I was indeed able to take a couple pictures of SteveB…

I know they’re not the best quality images, you’re going to have to blame my digital camera for that.

Getting a little more into the core of things, Steve did make a statement which made everyone cackle- he affirmed Microsoft was most likely to be able to stand on its own two feet if the merge between them and Yahoo! did not come through. How can he be so sure? ;-)

Amongst some of the other issues he discussed, he explained how web is continuously evolving hence everything is coming together-content, community and commerce. He followed by saying “big advertisers are not worried about bringing offline advertising online; they’re worried about making good websites,” which obviously lead to attracting substantial communities and selling products satisfactorily.

Another thing that caught my attention was when Sky TG24’s presenter, Marco Montemagno, asked him what he expected from the Web, 5 years from now. He went on saying how he imagined being in front of his TV watching Tiger Woods playing golf and speaking to his buddy Bill Gates through the TV. And in this conversation Bill comments on how cool the golf ball is and how he wonders what Tiger Woods is using. So Steve rewinds the game, and somehow clicks on a clear image of the ball, this one zooming in and appearing just like the Google’s Visualization API.

Sky’s presenter closed by asking Ballmer one final question: “Why do you keep going? You’re already one of the richest men on earth…what motivates you?”

In my own words, Ballmer’s response was something like- I like seeing how technology changes and transforms the world we live in. There’s a vast opportunity to do and keep doing so much, so why stop? And he closed by saying how he is such a dynamic and energetic person, his personality does not allow him to do otherwise.

Two thumbs up for you, Steve!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Media News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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