NewsDude

Steve Ballmer has been chief executive at Microsoft for eight years, but he is finally getting to move into the corner office vacated by Bill Gates, the college friend who brought him to the company nearly three decades ago.
The pressure of leading the world's largest software maker will only escalate in the wake of a bungled attempt to acquire Yahoo, a move that led Yahoo to forge closer ties with Google instead.
Adding fuel to the fire has been a lukewarm reception by customers for the flagship Microsoft product, Windows Vista.
"The pressure is certainly on," the investment analyst Alan Davis said.
For the first time in his career, the 52-year-old Ballmer, whose public histrionics often overshadow a sharp intellect and a gift for numbers, must shoulder the weight of Microsoft's future without Gates. The co-founder stepped down Friday to focus on philanthropy.
Their partnership was forged at Harvard University, where the pair formed an unlikely friendship: Gates, the middle child of a prominent Seattle family, and Ballmer, a Detroit native whose parents did not go to college.
They both lived in a dormitory full of "antisocial math types," according to Gates. Ballmer, who was outgoing and involved in many social clubs on campus, seemed to be a study in contrast to the aloof Gates, who preferred all-night programming sessions and poker games.
After college, Ballmer went to work at Procter & Gamble, sharing an office with Jeffrey Immelt, who would become chief executive of General Electric and who has said that the two disliked their boss and passed their days playing garbage-can basketball.
Ballmer spent a year at Stanford University business school before Gates persuaded him to drop out and become the first Microsoft business manager. A month after joining, Ballmer found that the company was running behind on orders and was overworking its...

More...