The Billionaire Who Never Needs To Knock Twice

Eric Ellis, San Francisco

11/01/1997

If Mr Steve Ballmer was an Australian politician, he'd probably be "Ironbar" Wilson Tuckey; the hard man, the toecutter, the bruiser.

Instead he's Mr Bill Gates' trusted Microsoft lieutenant and that makes him a billionaire, five times over. But no less a head-kicker.

The telephone call from Mr Ballmer is the one US executives don't want to take, but know they must. Even Mr Gates, who made "best friend" Mr Ballmer his best man, calls him "hardcore".

As The Wall Street Journal puts it, Mr Ballmer's the master of the "in-your-face" phone call. Mr Ballmer is the man Mr Gates sends into the belly of the beast, handing down the Microsoft tablets among the Silicon Valley establishment, among whom the Seattle-based technopolist is about as popular as Ms Pauline Hanson in Chinatown. If there's a reason Microsoft is one of the world's most pervasive companies, Mr Ballmer would have a lot to do with it.

"He gets people to buy Trabants and convinces them it's a Mercedes," says a Sun executive, currently embroiled in a legal stoush with the hated Seattlites. Mr Ballmer returns the compliment by calling Oracle's Mr Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems' Mr Scott McNealy - Microsoft's two blackest be Mr Ballmer's official title is "vice-president, sales and support" but it's the "support" at which he seems more effective. Mr David Dorman, until recently chief executive of the San Francisco phone giant Pacific Bell, remembers the call he got from Mr Ballmer. "He said, `You're either a friend or a foe, and you're an enemy now'." Mr Dorman was puzzled, mindful that PacBell's office ran Microsoft Windows on its 30,000-plus computers, a multimillion-dollar order. None of that mattered to Mr Ballmer. Mr Dorman's mistake was to partner with Netscape Communications in an all-in-one Internet access package.

In court documents filed earlier this month, Compaq's director of software procurement, Mr Stephen Decker, told US Government lawyers investigating Microsoft for monopoly practices that Microsoft threatened to terminate unilaterally its agreement to have Windows 95 as the basic Compaq software. Given that so much of the world's networks are connected through Windows-related technology, that would have devastated Compaq's sales, and almost certainly toppled it from top slot. Compaq demurred.

Microsoft denies it threatened Compaq, saying it simply "had discussions" regarding the contract.

Attorney-General Janet Reno, who is leading the anti-Microsoft drive in Washington, hasn't got a threatening call yet, but she might as well have. Last week, as the Justice Department was announcing the action - which threatens Microsoft with a fine of $US1 million ($1.43 million) a day - a defiant Mr Ballmer was telling anyone who would listen "to heck with Janet Reno". It's a lot easier to say that when you are a billionaire with a corporate cash pile of $US10 billion.

Few who travel in the Microsoft gravy train, or at least alongside it, are reluctant to speak out whenever something goes against the grain, lest the abundant flow of riches stops.

Sun's chief executive Mr Scott McNealy, the de facto leader of Silicon Valley's anti-Gates lobby, told the AFR last week that the best guide to Microsoft "paranoia" was the noise it makes when cornered. "The best thing that happened to our Java (computer language program) was the noise Microsoft made in attacking it. We got lots of free publicity."

Mr Ballmer didn't respond to the AFR's inquiries. The aura built up around him is legendary, all the more so since he took over as Mr Gates' number two after Mr Paul Allen faded from the scene.

The 41-year-old man known as the General George Patton of software claims to have never written a computer program in his life. Standing two metres-plus, fit and with a booming voice, Mr Ballmer's intensity and thrill-for-the-kill (of tiny competitors like Netscape) makes him feared and loved within Microsoft as a table-thumper, and by all accounts as an intimidating presence.

Says a retired Microsoftie: "You can live through a little table-pounding by Mr Ballmer so long as you have some nice stock options to look forward to."