Ballmer: Microsoft is winning winning winning

Quick, identify the speaker of the following sentence: “All in, baby… We are winning, winning, winning, winning, winning.”

Charlie Sheen, talking about his new TV gig, “Anger Management“? No way, kemosabe. It’s the Mad Ballmer, the Steve you can’t believe, the sweat-drenched swami of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

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He’s baaa-aaack.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 conference with John Batelle yesterday , Ballmer was his old bombastic self — trash-talking competitors, making dubious assertions about Microsoft products, and generally partying like it was still (Windows) 1995.

That “winning winning winning” quote? It refers to Microsoft’s cloud apps. Because when people say “cloud,” the first word that pops into your head is “Microsoft.” Well, maybe right after “Google,” “Amazon,” “Salesforce.com,” and “cumulus.”

Because, frankly, I was starting to give up hope. All the CEOs that were worth writing about — Ellison, Schmidt, Bartz, and now Jobs — have been replaced by dull empty suits. It seemed like Ballmer was poised to join them. Normally a week doesn’t pass without Ballmer saying something outrageous, but he’s been keeping such a low profile this year that a few weeks ago I felt compelled to ask, “Has anyone seen this man?“

But no more. Ballmer had this to say about Bing, which recently passed Yahoo in search market share but is still being lapped several times by Google:

Today I issue you all kind of a challenge. Take any search you want, try it out on Bing and try it out on Google. … 70 percent of the time you probably won’t care, 15 percent of the time you’ll like us better, and 15 percent of the time you’ll like the other guy better.

I can just see the marketing slogan now: “Most of the time you don’t give a damn. For the rest of the time, there’s Bing.”

On the competition from Facebook, Google Plus, Apple Ping, and so on, Batelle asked, “Have you decided to punt on social, or have you guys decided to surprise us at some point?” Ballmer’s response:

Xbox Live — we have 50 million people using Xbox Live, touching, connecting. It’s a different context, but it seems highly social to me … We concluded the acquisition of Skype, which is more about connecting with the people you are very closest to as opposed to the people you want to generally socialize with. There are a variety of things that fit under the social banner, and we’ve picked our play.

For anyone who’s watched 14-year-olds shouting obscenities at each other over Xbox Live, “social” is not the first word that comes to mind.

Batelle: “Are you glad you didn’t buy Yahoo for $44 billion?”

You know, times change. Ask any CEO who might have bought something before the market crashed in 2008, “Would you be glad you didn’t buy something?” Hallelujah. … If Yahoo would have accepted our bid … we would have closed post-Lehman Brothers. Sometimes you’re lucky in this life.

Sometimes you’re lucky, and sometimes you’re Yahoo. Fortunately, 70 percent of the time you just don’t care.

Ballmer called Windows 8 a “a no-compromise approach” that lets you use traditional input devices or your very own digits, and he ducked a question about whether Microsoft is building its own smartphones. But the most interesting responses came to questions about why anyone should buy a Windows Phone smartphone instead of an iPhone or Android handset. Sayeth Ballmer:

[Windows 8 phones put] your information front and center. Your friends and what’s going with them doing, that’s front and center. It’s not seas of icons and blah blah blah. Add a button — click. Bing’s there to help you get things done.

And Android?

You don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows phone. I think you do to use an Android phone. … It’s hard for me to be excited about the Android phones. Apple’s a good competitor, but a different kind of competitor.

Oh, snap. I bet the computer scientists over at Google will have something to say about that.

Anyway, it’s good to have Ballmer back. I need somebody to write about. It was getting kind of lonely out here.

What are your favorite Ballmerisms? Post yours below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Ballmer: Microsoft is winning winning winning,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.