Ballmer at Keynote? One Possible Explanation
Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 9:20AM 
image: Crunchgear.com(It was fun while it lasted: Via Twitter, Microsoft says Ballmer will not be on stage at WWDC. Oh well, enjoy the speculation regradless:)
A rather strange rumor is making the rounds today. According to Global Equities Research, and reported by Boy Genius Report, Steve Ballmer will be in attendance at Steve Jobs' WWDC Keynote. They go so far as to say seven minutes have been blocked out for Ballmer to make an on-stage appearance. While Gizmodo is guessing this is to promote the iPhone app development abilities of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, we're thinking there's something else going on here.
Could this be the rumored swap of bing for google as the default search engine on the iPhone? Heck maybe on the Mac itself. A partnership could even extend to maps for mobile devices.
Or let's take a stroll over to the world of crazy speculation: With J. Allard and Robbie Bach both leaving Microsoft, perhaps their decisions were partially influenced by some sort of impending gaming announcement between Apple and Microsoft. We throw that crazy one out there, just because in comparison the bing prediction looks pretty plausible.
Apple, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, bing Permalink
Reader Comments (1)
Ballmer is appearing onstage because back in 2003 the Steve's made a bet that Apple would never surpass Microsoft's market capitalization. Ballmer is coming on stage to say "you won" and to give steve jobs $5. Jobs will likely quip, "That's 5 times my yearly salary"!