Mike Arrington Spit-Attack – He Joins Elite Company
Misc January 28th, 2009
Image by jdlasica via Flickr
Disturbing news this morning: TechCrunch Founder Mike Arrington was about to leave the DLD Conference (hey, Eran, where’s your review?) when a stranger approached him, deliberately spat in his face and disappeared in the crowd.
This is as lowly as it gets. It’s also very cowardly. TechCrunch covers a lot of companies and people, some positively, some negatively, others not at all, which can hurt… and Mike does get occasionally abrasive, but does not go into personal attacks.
Anyone who has issues with Mike him can bring it up publicly, in a civilized manner. With zero barrier of entry to blogging, Twitter..etc there is no excuse not to do so.
Mike Arrington is now taking some time off, not only because of the spit-attack, but also to reflect on earlier threats on his and his family’s life and security.
What happened today is a despicable act, not to be taken lightly. I am not making fun of it either … but perhaps to cheer Mike up, I must point out that he is now in a Very Elite Club, where his fellow members are none other but Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
We probably all remember how Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer received the egg treatment in Budapest last year:
But I suspect some of my readers are too young to recall that ten years before the Ballmer-incident, Microsoft Founder Bill Gates received a full cream-pie in his face on a visit to Belgium:
(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here.)
Related posts:
- Life Threatened, Spat On, TechCrunch’s Arrington Takes Leave
- Michael Arrington Takes a Break After Death Threat and Spit Attack
- Mike’s mood improves when Paulo Coelho arrives
Tags: bill gates, egg-throwing, gates creampie, microsoft, mike arrington, prank, protest, spit-attack, steve ballmer, techcrunch
Microsoft’s Aborted Baby: the First Web-Office (Almost)
Business, Personal Productivity, SaaS June 5th, 2008
The transition of power from Founder to Successor is never smooth. If there’s one company that planned it carefully and has been on the path of smooth execution, that’s Microsoft. Life-long friendship, 8-year-long transition – yet things got bumpy at times, especially in the early days. The Wall Street Journal runs a story with rare insight into some of the difficult times:
Things became so bitter that, on one occasion, Mr. Gates stormed out of a meeting in a huff after a shouting match in which Mr. Ballmer jumped to the defense of several colleagues…
The conflict between the two men paralyzed business-strategy decisions that the company still wrestles with today.
The two men clashed as Mr. Ballmer tried to assert himself in his new job. As the firm’s iconic leader, Mr. Gates still held sway that wasn’t tied to a title: In meetings Mr. Gates would interject with sarcasm, undermining Mr. Ballmer in front of other executives, Mr. Gates and other Microsoft executives say.
Two worked out their differences in 2001, when Founder Bill Gates realized he himself needed to change: having formally relinquished the CEO title to Steve Ballmer, he had to let him lead without constantly being challenged, overshadowed.
But let’s turn back to our angle here, how Microsoft could have been a very early SaaS pioneer:
In one case, two vice presidents clashed over the future of NetDocs, a promising effort to offer software programs such as word processing over the Internet. The issue: Because NetDocs risked cannibalizing sales of Microsoft’s cash-cow Office programs, some executives wanted NetDocs killed.
Messrs. Gates and Ballmer were unable to settle on a plan. First, NetDocs ballooned to a 400-person staff, then it got folded into the Office group in early 2001, where it died.
Fascinating. Eight years later web-based products still threaten to cannibalize Microsoft’s cash-cow, but they can no longer be ignored – largely because of Google and Zoho which now offer viable alternatives to users formerly “stuck” with Microsoft’s products. A costly debate, indeed.
Tags: bill gates, Google, microsoft, netdocs, SaaS, steve ballmer, web office, zoho
Steve Ballmer Receives the Egg-treatment in Budapest
Misc May 19th, 2008
Just as soon as the Microsoft CEO started his speech at the Corvinus University (my Alma Mater), a protesting student wearing a “Microsoft=Corruption” shirt stood up and threw eggs at the Microsoft CEO. Not exactly a sign of the famous “Hungarian hospitality”.
(If your feed does not show embedded videos, please click through to watch it in the blog. Update: Originally I had the index.hu video here, but as it started to slow down, I uloaded it to youtube and am now embedding the youtube version. A day later this vid received over 223K views)
On second thought, perhaps it was fair enough. After all, his boss, Bill Gates received a full cream-pie in the face ten years ago in Belgium – Ballmer only got some of the ingredients. 
Another ironic moment comes at 0:38m in the video: as other students stand up to give way to the departing egg-thrower, the camera closes in on one of them holding up his shiny Apple – and not the pie variety.
Update: The search is on for Ballmer’s replacement.
Another video from a different angle, and it ends with the Gates Pie Scene.
Update#2: OK, enough of the fun part. As the story circulates people start wondering what may be the background, and since the only sources are in Hungarian, here’s a summary of the circumstances:
A Hungarian Government bid, worth $25B Hungarian Forints, roughly $157M was allegedly skewed towards MS. (A ‘competitive’ bid with wording that all but ensures only Microsoft meets the requirements.) A Hungarian Watchdog Body (sort of like the FTC in the US) challenged the bidding process via the Court system, and a trial date was set for today. The trial was suddenly and unexpectedly rescheduled just as Ballmer arrived in Budapest. So there may be a perception of the Bully lobbying there.
That said, they could have protested with banners, without eggs. Or displaying more of those flashy Macbooks.
Tags: Apple, bill gates, budapes, egg-throwing, gates creampie, mac, microsoft, prank, protest, steve ballmer
How to Make Outlook Cool. Actually, Kool.
Personal Productivity, SaaS April 20th, 2008
Outlook read backwards is Kooltuo. Wow, it would make a good startup name. No, I did not go crazy, but TechCrunch reports that Microsoft just signed a letter of intent to acquire Xobni. And Xobni = Inbox, backwards.
Not that it’s a surprise: I wish I could predict everything with such certainty. This is what wrote in February, when Bill Gates presented Xobni for Outlook as “the next generation of social networking” at the Microsoft Office Developers Conference:
What does it mean when Bill Gates presents your product, a super-cool Outlook plugin to his crowd of developers?
- Gates’s message: now go back and copy this fast. That would be the classic Microsoft style, as many software startups can attest to. It would also put the market introduction to somewhere … around 2015? Unlikely.
- Microsoft will acquire Xobni in no time. Sweet and fast deal. Congratulations to the Xobni team and investors!
So, yes, congratulations to the Xobni team! On a personal note, I regret I can’t try Xobni, as I long ago ditched Outlook along with a lot of desktop bloatware, and am in happier land now, using Web-based applications. I’m perfectly happy ( and productive) with the combination of Gmail and the Zoho apps, and if I ever leave Gmail, it will be for another web-mail, not back to the desktop. The air is fresher in the Cloud.
Tags: bill gates, cloud computing, email, gmail, Google, microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook, SaaS, xobni, zoho
How to Hire Bill Gates to Demo your Startup’s Product
Personal Productivity, Software, Startups February 12th, 2008
Actually, I don’t know how, but Xobni apparently does: Bill Gates presented Xobni for Outlook as “the next generation of social networking” (is that why he quit Facebook?) at the Microsoft Office Developers Conference yesterday (video here).
Now, let’s think for a minute. What does it mean when Bill Gates presents your product, a super-cool Outlook plugin to his crowd of developers?
- Gates’s message: now go back and copy this fast. That would be the classic Microsoft style, as many software startups can attest to. It would also put the market introduction to somewhere … around 2015? Unlikely.
- Microsoft will acquire Xobni in no time. Sweet and fast deal. Congratulations to the Xobni team and investors!
Update (2/15): Xobni has a new CEO: Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo’s vice president of social search until now. Did he just escape from one Microsoft acquisition and get into another one? 
Update (3/2): TechCrunch has sources confirming the Microsoft negotiations.
Update (3/20): Bob Warfield believes Microsoft is about to close the deal with Xobni.
Tags: acquisition, bill gates, email, microsoft, ms outlook, Outlook, startup exit, Startups, xobni
Zoli Erdos
