you have to do a lot of squinting to accept this take.

so his wins were copying competitors, and even those products didn’t see success until they were completely revolutionized (Bing in 2024 is a Ballmer success? .NET becoming widespread is his doing?). one thing Nadela did was embrace the competitive landscape and open source with key acquisitions like GitHub and open sourcing .NET, and i honestly don’t have the time to fully rebuff this hot take. but i don’t think the Ballmer haters are totally off base here. even if some of the products started under Ballmer are now successful, it feels disingenuous to attribute their success to him. it’s like an alcoholic dad taking credit for his kid becoming an actor. Microsoft is successful despite him