“Monkeyboy” Ballmer rides again

“Monkeyboy”

Ok folks, this is old news, but nonetheless it’s funny. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft also known as “Monkeyboy” vowed to ‘kill’ Google in a chair-throwing tirade when a senior engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work for Google. Thus the engineer claimed in court documents made public in September this year.

C|Net reports about the incident as follows:

In a sworn statement made public Friday, Mark Lucovsky, another Microsoft senior engineer who left for Google in November 2004, recounted Ballmer’s angry reaction when Lucovsky told Ballmer he was going to work for the search engine company.

“At some point in the conversation, Mr. Ballmer said: ‘Just tell me it’s not Google,'” Lucovosky said in his statement. Lucovosky replied that he was joining Google.

“At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office,” Lucovosky recounted, adding that Ballmer then launched into a tirade about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “I’m going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f***ing kill Google.” Schmidt previously worked for Sun Microsystems and was the CEO of Novell.

Late Friday, Ballmer issued a statement disputing Lucovsky’s declaration. “Mark Lucovsky’s account of our conversation last November is a gross exaggeration of what actually took place,” Ballmer said. “Mark’s decision to leave was disappointing and I urged him strongly to change his mind. But his characterization of that meeting is not accurate.”

Later on, Ballmer started to downplay the whole incident and said he didn’t really remember the exact words he used and also denying he ever threw a chair.

Off course: nobody would really believe Ballmer would be capable of actually doing something like that right? Heh, well I guess that they only have to show the following two clips of him “in action” to prove otherwise:

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

Exhibit A: the famous Ballmer Monkey-dance