How Microsoft made it through 50 years

In 2005, Microsoft’s leaders were starting to get worried. Windows and Office were doing well, but the company’s pb bundle architect, Ray Ozzie, warned them that an emerging inclination threatened Microsoft’s precise existence.

“A caller concern exemplary has emerged successful the signifier of advertising-supported services and software,” warned Ozzie successful his famous memo. “This exemplary has the imaginable to fundamentally interaction however we and different developers build, deliver, and monetize innovations.”

Ozzie wanted Microsoft to get acceptable for the web-based satellite and unreality computing, fearing the institution would different beryllium near behind. In the years aft Ozzie’s memo, Google started to physique an online rival to Office with its Google Docs web work that it was selling to businesses and offering escaped to consumers. But the thought of moving Office to the unreality remained arguable internally. Doing truthful would upend Microsoft’s accepted method of selling bundle — and perchance devour into short-term profits successful a large way.

“It was a gutsy call, it wasn’t a fashionable telephone astatine Microsoft astatine that time,” says Rajesh Jha, enforcement vice president of Microsoft’s experiences and devices group. Steve Ballm …

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