Now that we've got your attention
I was in a conversation last night where the subject turned to Office and whether it's dead or not. You know, the good old Notes is Dead micromeme that I pushed out into the world way back when Ray Ozzie was not the Prince of Redmond.
Context & Ripple Effects
The 'Office is dead' question making the rounds this week is a rerun for Steve Gillmor: he confirms he pushed out the original "Notes is Dead" micromeme years ago, back when Ray Ozzie was still associated with Notes rather than Microsoft. The framing has effectively followed Ozzie up the ladder — the same death-watch template once applied to his own creation is now being pointed at Microsoft's biggest franchise.
What raises the stakes beyond blog chatter is an unconfirmed report from November 2005 that Bill Gates and Ozzie are expected to announce a strategic break with Microsoft's past toward offering software as a service. If that rumor holds, the packaged-suite business that defines Office would sit squarely in the path of the company's own pivot.
First-order effects
- Office — the revenue engine of Microsoft's application business — becomes the subject of an obituary debate just as its own leadership (Ozzie) is rumored to be steering the company toward services, forcing Microsoft to defend a franchise while transitioning it.
- The "X is dead" meme format, which Gillmor originated against Lotus Notes, gets reapplied by the same author to Office, setting the terms of the argument competitors and commentators will use.
Second-order effects
- If Gates and Ozzie do announce a software-as-a-service break, rivals in productivity software face pressure to reposition their own suites around hosted delivery rather than boxed releases, since the incumbent would have legitimized the shift.
- A public death-watch on Office hands Microsoft's competitors a narrative weapon independent of any actual product failure — perception of decline can precede and shape real purchasing hesitancy among corporate buyers.
Third-order effects
- If the rumored services pivot holds, the industry's evaluation of desktop-era franchises shifts from release cycles to transition credibility — whether an incumbent can cannibalize itself before someone else does.
- The episode extends the pattern Gillmor started with Notes: declaring incumbents dead becomes a standing analytical genre that follows executives as they move between companies, shaping how each new platform battle gets framed.
The trend: Productivity software is moving from a debate over packaged suites versus obsolescence into a services-led transition driven by the incumbents themselves, with Microsoft's rumored Gates-Ozzie announcement the pivotal data point.