Microsoft's Bill Gates & Steve Balmer: Potty Mouths!

Chair hurling Microsoft CEO Ballmer: 'I'm going to f---ing kill Google'

"Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to 'kill' internet search leader Google Inc. in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive 'like wolves,' according to documents filed in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals.," The Sydney Morning Herald reports. "The allegations, filed in a Washington state court, represent the latest salvos in a showdown triggered by Google's July hiring of former Microsoft executive Kai Fu-Lee to oversee a research and development centre that Google plans to open in China. Lee started at Google the day after he resigned from Microsoft."

The SMH reports, "The tug-of-war over Lee - known for his work on computer recognition of language - has exposed the behind-the-scenes animosity that has been brewing between two of high-tech's best-known companies. Ballmer's threat last November was recounted in a sworn declaration by a former Microsoft engineer, Mark Lucovsky, who said he met with Microsoft's chief executive 10 months ago to discuss his decision to leave the company after six years. After learning Lucovsky was leaving to take a job at Google, Ballmer picked up his chair and hurled it across his office, according to the declaration. Ballmer then pejoratively berated Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lucovsky recalled. 'I'm going to f---ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again,' the declaration quotes Ballmer. 'I'm going to f---ing kill Google.'"

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Meanwhile... on the OTHER side of the OK Corale...

Microsoft's Bill Gates: 'We've been f---ed by China'

"Former Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee has accused the software giant of incompetence in its plans to gain a business footing in China, and testified that an expletive-filled tirade from chairman Bill Gates was a low point before he defected to rival Google," The Associated Press reports."In testimony during a hearing on Microsoft's lawsuit against Lee and Google, Lee said on Tuesday he wrote a memo to another Microsoft executive saying he was 'deeply disappointed at our incompetence in China - that we have wasted so many years in China with little to show for it.' Lee went on to say in the email that he was embarrassed by Microsoft's business practices and that people in the government joked about Microsoft's internal politics," The Associated Press reports. "He testified that one of the lowest moments of his career with Microsoft was a conversation in which Gates yelled at him and said the company had been 'f-----' by the Chinese people and its government. Lee did not clarify the context of Gates' comments."

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