Microsoft Lays Steve Ballmer Rumor to Rest

May 27, 2010

Trevan McGee

CEO will not be speaking at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference

The tech blogs were abuzz with speculation this morning that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would not only be on-hand for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next week, but that he would be speaking during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote. But after speculation hit fever-pitch, the Redmond Wash. company addressed the issue via the corporate Twitter account.

"Steve Ballmer is not speaking at Apple Dv. Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI," the tweet said.

The entire rumor spawned from Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research. Chowdhry sheepishly added that if Ballmer doesn't give the speech regarding Microsofts new Virtual Studio 2010, Bob Muglia, the president of server and business tools would give the presentation. Nice cop-out.

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Welcome

We don't cover a lot of Microsoft technology in this magazine (except in our "Interoperability" and "Living with Windows" issues), but sometimes the moving and shaking of Microsoft really does affect the rest of the high-tech industry. Redmond announced that they were laying off 18,000 people recently; big layoffs are always big news, and Microsoft's bold swipe dominated the high-tech headlines, but another important update from the empire received a lesser share of attention. New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's manifesto to his employees, dated July 10, 2014, set out a new direction for the company.

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