Almost three years ago, when I retired, my wife and I were talking about our philanthropic work and how does one help give opportunity, particularly to kids growing up in very disadvantaged situations.And my initial kind of sense was, the government does that primarily, and what we should mostly do is pay our taxes. My wife said, no, I don't think that's quite right for us. We need to do more. We can do better.
Steve BallmerThere's a lot of Google fascination out there and we share it, and we're going to compete, we're going to compete very, very hard.
Steve BallmerI think there are lots of opportunities to improve the product. When you read the press, people say, "Oh, the product needs improvement." I look at that and say, "Hey, that's an exciting thing to get behind!" Because they can improve that product. That leaves more upside from an innovation and revenue potential than you're gonna find in a lot of places. So you could say that's a downside, I see that as an opportunity.
Steve BallmerWe've grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.
Steve BallmerWe're going to try to do more to communicate the value of activation to customers in addition to making the process simpler and more consistent.
Steve Ballmer