Revealed: Tech titans of the past 25 years

Mentioned by 35 percent of voters, Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, is a controversial figure in the industry.

Known for his forceful personality and his enthusiastic stage presentations, Ballmer has been labelled with the moniker "monkey boy" in some circles.

"I have never, honestly, thrown a chair in my life," Ballmer said in a morning keynote at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Florida in 2005. Ballmer was responding to a comment regarding well-publicised testimony by a former employee that Ballmer had tossed furniture and vowed to "kill Google" when informed of the employee's decision to leave Microsoft for the search firm.