They are/were. I worked there from Feb 2000 until Dec 2014. The company changed a great deal over that time. Without commenting directly on Ballmer I will say Satya Nadella is a great CEO and he is doing a great job transforming the company.
Hopefully he will take responsibility for cleaning up the app store and stop focusing on app count. I wrote Satya, the GM of the Windows Store, and various PMs on that team, but nothing.
Countless tons of crap on the store. MS paying for shovelware. CSRs defending fake versions of Dropbox. Fake Windows Updates on the store. Publishers pretending to be Microsoft or other big vendors. Smaller ISVs unable to get scam versions of their software removed. Hell, even Netflix had s tough time getting rid of fake Netflix apps.
