Google Gets Guerrilla Marketing - Microsoft's Ballmer Does Not (GOOG, MSFT)

Microsoft CEO (MSFT) Steve Ballmer was a no-show again on the company's earnings conference call Thursday night. Microsoft continues to maintain a no-CEO posture on such things -- neither Gates nor Ballmer have been on a Microsoft earnings conference call in at least two years -- and I keep wondering why they do it. It makes the company seem defensive and over-murky, among other things.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: earnings conference call no show

Rather than treating such calls as purely financial events that are beneath Ballmer and sending the CFO out to spin, couldn't Microsoft steal a page from Google (GOOG)? Last earnings conference call Google had Larry, Sergey, and Eric on the call with the financial types, and they spun and sold furiously. Going back over the couple of years of Google earnings calls, such royal attendance is the rule at Google, very much unlike their wrong-headedly shy counterparts at Microsoft.

It is another example of where the Google guys get guerrilla marketing and Microsoft is stuck in the past.

Comments

[Christopher...:]

Hey Paul, Why bother listening to the call anyway? They don't give any useful information.

2006 Oct 29 05:21 PM

[john doe123:]

I guess Steve Jobs doesn't get guerilla marketing either, since he doesn't show up for the Apple conference calls.

2006 Oct 29 07:07 PM