If there were ever a CEO who was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic without knowing it, it’s Steve Ballmer. Read on…

“Steve Ballmer must be on crack. Or something. In a fascinating interview with the Financial Times, Ballmer has the cheek to call Google a one-trick pony (this from the company that has only managed two break-out successes so far), can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that he hasn’t budged his stock price in eight years, and takes solace in the fact that the company only has “one way to go, and it’s up, baby, up, up, up, up, up!”

Please pass the vial, Ballmer.

One place where he comes down to earth is in his admission that he hasn’t figured out how to compete with open source:

I’ve got to tell you, in every – other than the battle with Open Source, every other competitor, I love being able to come into a room and saying we’re better and we’re cheaper. We’re going to try to say we’re better and we’re cheaper basically. [Editor; big lie!]

In the case of Linux vs. Windows, anyway, Microsoft is neither better nor cheaper. In its other products, too, it’s losing that argument.

But it’s really in deriding Google that Ballmer looks ridiculous. When asked about Google, he opines:

I mean, come on. They have one product. It’s been the same for five years – and they have Gmail now, but they have one product that makes all their money, and it hasn’t changed in five years.

I mean, they have a gestalt, but gestalt is gestalt. Let’s talk about the reality. The reality is one product makes 98 percent of all of their money, search.

Pot, meet kettle. As the Wall Street Journal noted in response to this Ballmer comment, “The definition of death, in corporate America, is believing you don’t have any competition. The definition of being in a coma may be underestimating that competition.” Ballmer even said that Microsoft has only had two hits – Office and Windows – in the interview.” Ballmer to Google: You’re a one-hit wonder | The Open Road – The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay – CNET News.com

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