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Whatever happened to Ray Ozzie?

December 22, 2006 By Jason Kolb 3 Comments

Whatever happened to Ray Ozzie?  Just this past June he was named CTO of Microsoft, and he immediately made a splash by mandating that Microsoft would participate in the software as a Have_you_seen_ray_ozzie_lat_1  service (SaaS) movement with Windows Live and helping to create several innovative technologies such as Live Clipboard and Simple Sharing Extensions.

Let’s review 2006 for Microsoft:

  • They announced Windows Live and did very little with it (boo)
  • They announced that they were spearheading several innovative technologies and then did nothing with them (boo)
  • They released IE 7 (meh)
  • They announced and released the Zune (close but no cigar)
  • They released Vista (thud)

What’s going on?  Ozzie got off to a great start, but since then things have been really quiet, and the initiatives that Ozzie started when he came onboard seem to be losing pretty much all of their momentum.  His blog hasn’t even been updated since April of this year.  I thought he was going to breathe some life into Microsoft but in my opinion 2006 was a TERRIBLE year for the company.  They went from being slightly behind Google in the race to run the Internet to falling down and breaking their metaphorical femur.  Microsoft has quite a bit of catching up to do in 2007 if they hope to be around much longer.

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Filed Under: Random Thoughts
  • http://intelligantt.blogspot.com John Milan

    You're tagging the Zune and Vista on Ray Ozzie?

    Having recently talked with his press representative, my understanding is Ray is heads down on the Live initiative and will re-appear April 2007.

    While it may seem odd for an executive to 'disappear', remember that Ray's history is to disappear for stretches as he works on his stuff. Groove was even hidden from view for quite a long time (to Groove's detriment, imho) before a concerted effort was made to get the word out.

    So I'm keeping an open mind and we'll see what April brings.

  • http://www.jasonkolb.com Jason Kolb

    While that may be true, all of the initiatives that he started when he first took the job seem to be grinding to a standstill. Unfortunately his job is one that requires him to be a public face and spread the Microsoft gospel, and I just haven't seen him for the past nine months. Hope he has a few more rabbits in his hat…

  • http://schestowitz.com Roy Schestowitz