[nicollo]

Nadella hasn’t overseen creation of a single new service or product. He has merely cut/focused.

Ballmer should get far more credit for current stock market success.

[dayglored]

Granted that things like Office 365 got their start while Ballmer was CEO. But his focus was entirely on Windows as a product to the near-exclusion of all else. His famous laughing dismissal of the iPhone and the disastrous Nokia affair are indications of how out-of-touch he had become with what the market was actually doing.

His maniacal animosity toward open source and Linux in particular made no sense and caused people to move away from Microsoft's uber-proprietary stance.

He can get credit for some of the things that got started on his watch, but had he remained CEO for the past five years, I believe Microsoft would not be prospering as it is, and would be both a technical and business laughingstock, despite its remaining grip on the dwindling desktop market.