Microsoft Reports Loss Due to Write-down

Microsoft Corp. Reports First Huge Loss As Public Company

A substantial accounting write-down of $6.2 billion related to the company's 2007 acquisition of aQuantive, an online advertising company, has wiped the software maker's entire Q4 profit.

previous on ThinkBillions-

Microsoft stock continues to go nowhere, but Steve Ballmer has a plan!

Microsoft stock continues to go nowhere, but Steve Ballmer has a plan!

The kind of CEO backside kissing that Businessweek brings to journalism is truly special. You'll want to read the following article for proof if you can stomach it--

Steve Ballmer Reboots

... because, after all according to BW, Steve Ballmer is all about "Cooler tech, more energy, higher profit—the Microsoft CEO is out to prove Steve Jobs wrong and make Redmond relevant again."

Interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch interviews Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on September 24, 2009.

The Village Billionaire Idiot, Yahoo's Jerry Yang, Now Loves Microsoft

Readers, we cannot make this stuff up.

Billionaire Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is now ready to bargain with Microsoft over the sale of his company after screwing over shareholders and many others all year long.

"To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang said from the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco this week.

Microsoft withdrew its $33 per share bid offer earlier this year after Village Idiot Yang demanded $37. Current price: $13.96. Where did this guy go to school?

Steve ... offer $9 bucks a share. See what happens. LOL!

Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison are billions less rich

Sure, billionaire guys like Buffett, Ellison and Steve Ballmer have ridden the capitalistic market cycle quite in their favor over the past 20 or 30 years.

However, each of these guys have something in common other than being billionaires. They have each dropped over a billion, as in several billions, in net worth over the past year or so due to the stock market crash. It may not hurt, but it has to sting.

Ouch. Payday loan guys? lol.

Read all about it in - Billionaire Blues

T. Boone Pickens should have shorted Yahoo, instead

Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens just took a hard, cold tech bath by going long YHOO, with his buddy Carl Icahn, in the yearlong battle to takeover Yahoo! and toss it to Steve Balmer and Microsoft. He has sold all of his shares.

T. Boone's loss is estimated at $50 million.


Dealbreaker

San Francisco Chronicle

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft is "The World's Hardest-Working Billionaire"

According to Forbes Magazine .....

Ballmer has been working especially hard this year to revamp Microsoft and make it more competitive with tech's new "it girl," Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ). The major battle is for online search advertising, which the Internet king all but created--and dominates.

Ballmer will go to any length to sell a product, and doesn't worry about looking like a fool. In public appearances, he jumps and screeches like a monkey, drenches himself in sweat and sticks out his tongue when he's really pumped up about something.

Update -

WSJ: Gates-Ballmer clash