Guy Kawasaki Calls Steve Ballmer Racist at MIX08 Show in Las Vegas

Legendary Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Guy Kawasaki Kicked off Day two Keynote with a joke accusing Steve Ballmer being a racist, according to Guy, it must be the only reason why Steve didn’t hire him at Microsoft in 87’ when he applied, and thus why he ended up at Apple (and did ok for himself as well).

Guy popped the question everyone wanted to hear, why do you want to buy Yahoo? Steve says it’s quite simple, he thinks Microsoft has worked really hard to make it clear that they have real commitment, real aspiration, and real tenacity about being a serious player in the online search and advertising space. He says quote”Advertising on the internet is big, and advertising online will be the next SUPER BIG THING, there’s no question about that”, and “SEARCH” is the killer advertising application.

Guy actually was able get Steve to say the G word (GOOGLE), which is amazing in itself, and Guy (The Apple Man) Kawasaki actually gave Microsoft some praise.”We just don’t see Google where we operate; we have four main areas of business desktop, server & enterprise, devices & entertainment, and the internet said Ballmer, sure Google has aspirations for the enterprise, and aspirations for device and entertainment with You Tube and Android, but we will see.” I almost jumped out of my seat when I heard Ballmer actually claim to be an underdog in the internet and search market, but I guess there is some truth to this if Google actually controls 50% in some countries, and 90% in the US.

The CEO of the largest software company in the world went on to throw some interesting facts about the device and entertainment business units, like there are 20-25 million Xbox customers around the world, and the company has about 1.1 million users who subscribe to the monthly online premium service. Steve also reveals that DANGER is at the center of the company’s mobile “entertainment services” play (see I told you so, see MY BW post “Microsoft is doing everything right”).

The company has already beefed up its search business, and prepared for the potential proxy fight with Yahoo, way back in the fall of 07 when it acquired Fast Search, a company which just so happen to be the vendor who powers Yahoo’s search engine.

Ballmer goes on to mention that Apple had licensed Microsoft’s active sync technology to sync iPhones with Exchange servers, and opened up its API today for third party software developers to build apps for the iPhone. Hinting to in my opinion that is trying to “catch up” with Microsoft on the mobile phone business, but still has a way to go with Microsoft expected to have a 50% market share of the smart phone market by 2010.