Anyone who has seen Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in action — either in person or in one of the hilarious video clips of his Monkey Boy motivational-speaker routine — knows that it isn’t easy for him to play the underdog role. His thing is more of the “barking mad pit-bull” kind of role. But in a recent Business Week interview, he does his best to paint a scary picture of a world where Google is a media giant with no competition:
The truth is what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google. So media companies around the world are all threatened by Google. Why? Because basically Google is telling you how much of your ad revenue you get to keep.They better get some competition. Us. Yahoo. Somebody better break through or you can short all media stocks right now.
Boy, I’m getting all choked up, Uncle Steve. Good thing we have Microsoft out there trying to help us poor folk. Feel free to tack a little more onto the purchase price of Vista and put it towards the “Microsoft Media” competition fund.