Russell Buckley of Mobhappy wrote about Gate's leaked memo and a “Sea Change”.

I don't think MSFT is steering in the wrong direction, but instead I see adaptability to market conditions. I think the memo covers only one of MSFT's many “battlefronts” — the Internet-based software and services "battlefront". And this is because web-based software and services are central to the rest of MSFT (and other company's) products. The following list shows some of MSFT's “battlefronts” and the related products:

  • Internet-based software & services, search and advertising (Live products such as
    Windows Live and
    Office Live, Start),
  • Community (MSN, see above),
  • Mobility (Windows Mobile),
  • Media and gaming (Media Center and Xbox)

Not mentioned above are the business and tools areas, which also leverages the web services paradigm.

Internet-based software and services are key to the whole thing, to all products. And this market is way still too young to discount anyone yet, especially MSFT. And with respect to mobility and this strategy, it is about the combination of mobility + Web 2.0 (Mobility 2.0) – which goes back to why the services on the net are so important, whatever they are — search and maps as in the case of Google's new Local app. for mobile, or services to enhance communication between people.

I think Ray Ozzie,
who is a smart and open-minded person with a great track record, is going to make a huge impact on MSFT (it typically takes
the right leader with the right influence to steer a company in the right direction), more directly on Internet-based software and services, and more indirectly on the rest of the battlefronts such as mobility. We are seeing Ray's impact already, in
publicly recognizing the importance of web-based services and software in general,
and their competition and limitations, and reacting to this by steering a very large company, something that is very hard to do, to address this —
Gates seems to be listening/leveraging his evangelist/CTO, and it seems to me MSFT is moving faster on this strategy than what I have seen it do before.

So I believe the memo shows adaptability, or at least attempts to adapt… vs. the company doing the wrong thing — don't you agree?

You can find the “The Internet Services Disruption” memo by Ray Ozzie at Dave Winer's website.

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