Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is perhaps Stanford Business School's most famous -- if not most successful -- dropout. He met with students at his alma mater this week, and confessed his greatest fears (from the San Jose Mercury News):
At Microsoft, Ballmer said the threats he worried about most were new business models, such as advertising-based media sites and open-source software companies, most of whom give away their code for free.
"If somebody came to you and said you have a new competitor that has no price and has no cost structure you might stay up a night or two on that one," he said.
One of those competitors, of course, is Google, and Ballmer gave the student crowd a nice dose of FUD. Smart move -- many are probably interviewing at Google.
Ballmer compared Google's rapid growth expansion with Microsoft's steady, long-term expansion, from 24 employees when Ballmer joined in 1980 to roughly 75,000 today.
"They're trying to double in a year. That's insane. It doesn't mean they won't do it well," he said.
"I don't know anybody has proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value," he added.
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