Microsoft WAKE UP CALL @20:05
November 11th, 2005 by jeremychone
In the last couple of weeks Microsoft has been pretty loud around the "new Internet wave." First, with the announcement of Windows live and Office live, and then, with the very insightful Ozzie and Gates "leaked" memos.
It is very interesting to watch Microsoft waking up, loud and determined as in 1995. The fact they chose Windows and Office brand for their "Live" offerings is significant.
A few interesting points from the Ozzie memo:
- Microsoft did openly recognize having missed some opportunities (e.g., Google, Skype, AJAX).
- They are puzzled about Google’s strategy:
"[Google's] myriad initiatives … drive scale for their advertising business … or … grow to substantively challenge our offerings"
(BTW, good job from Google. In less than a decade, they puzzled Microsoft) - Ozzie did a good assessment regarding today’s Web hurdles:
"User identity and cross-service interoperability mechanisms are still needlessly fragmented".
(I hope this means Microsoft will work on standards and interoperability, instead of creating another proprietary Identity Management "a la MS-Passport"!) - Regarding my previous point about this new advertisement revenue potential, Ozzie did confirm that "… no one yet knows how much of the world’s online advertising revenues should or will flow."
- Ozzie does point out the value of the Internet adoption model and seamless application integration.
Microsoft is certainly doing the right thing by embracing these changes. During the last couple of years, a lot of "underground" work has been done to come to this point. It will be interesting to see Microsoft catching up. Undoubtedly, they can catch-up on the technology side. Their real challenge will be adapting to these new business models.
Some missing points from Ozzie’s memo (just for speculation sake):
- No mention of Open Source. Ozzie could have said that Open Source is part of this new ecosystem. He probably wants to tackle this topic offline.
- Ozzie did explicitly mention the term AJAX couple of times, but not Web 2.0. Arguably, Web 2.0 encompasses AJAX. Free speculation: Microsoft might be starting branding MS Live "against" Web 2.0.
Related links:
- Dave Winer publishes Gates and Ozzie memos.
- On Slashdot –
Why Microsoft and Google are Cleaning Up With AJAX - Marc Benioff’s retort
November 29th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
[...] Interoperability mechanisms fragmentation: As Ray Ozzie mentioned in his memo, cross-service interoperability mechanisms fragmentation is also a key obstacle to Internet growth. However, the defacto standard, where "clone services" just copy the APIs of their established competitors, has been a pretty good short term workaround. For example, 23 photo sharing service, profiled by TechCrunch, cloned Flickr from the user interface down to the APIs. There are also very promising new simple protocols, like SSE, that will probably continue to emerge as needed. [...]