Ballmer Not Worried About Competition From Google, Downplays Dropbox

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn't afraid to speak his mind when it comes to competition, and that's exactly what he did just recently speaking about Google and Dropbox. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Ballmer discussed the company's new Office 2013 suite, as well as its SkyDrive cloud storage service, and said that he's confident that Microsoft's new Office products will gain a lot of users, despite competition from Google's own set of office suite products.

Speaking about Dropbox, Ballmer mentioned that the service's 100 million users "sounds like a pretty small number," and he noted that Office users outnumber Dropbox's user base by quite a few. While he wasn't necessarily trying to downplay Dropbox's significance, Ballmer said that it's merely just a "fine little startup."

Microsoft currently boasts around one billion Office users, and while many think that number will stay stagnant, Ballmer disagrees and says that the service will continue to grow and bring in new users, thanks to the "more and more people" entering the classroom or office and taking on more information-heavy jobs.

Towards the end of the interview, Ballmer was asked about Office coming to the iPad, and declined to directly comment on it. However, he did say that the company is "very glad" and "very happy" with the product, and "it makes sense on the devices like the Mac and the PC." As far as future plans for an iPad version of Office, though? "We'll see what we see in the future."

[via Bloomberg Businessweek]