IndustryMicrosoft’s Ray Ozzie: “We Knew Search Would Be Important”

Microsoft's Ray Ozzie: "We Knew Search Would Be Important"

We’ve read numerous comments from Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in the recent past about web search and Google in particular. This time it’s Microsoft’s CTO, Ray Ozzie, with a few thoughts that were published internally and seen by News.com.

Key Quotes:

“We should’ve been leaders with all our web properties in harnessing the potential of Ajax, following our pioneering work in OWA (Outlook Web Access),” Ozzie wrote. “We knew search would be important, but through Google’s focus they’ve gained a tremendously strong position.”

“Google is obviously the most visible here, although given the hype level it is difficult to ascertain which of their myriad initiatives are simply adjuncts intended to drive scale for their advertising business, or which might ultimately grow to substantively challenge our offerings,” Ozzie wrote. “Although Yahoo also has significant communications assets that combine software and services, they are more of a media company and–with the notable exception of their advertising platform–they seem to be utilizing their platform capabilities largely as an internal asset.

Postscript: You can read the memos yourself directly through Dave Winer’s Hypercamp, where he’s gotten copies of them.

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