Ray Ozzie's Christmas Message: 2006 will be Year of Build for Microsoft
In the tech world's equivalent of the Queen's Message, Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie reflects on the year past and offers his thoughts on what lies ahead for Microsoft in 2006: — As he reviews the 'leaked' memo …
Context & Ripple Effects
In early November, Ross Mayfield argued Microsoft needed to turn on a dime to meet the web-services shift — and by late December, new CTO Ray Ozzie is supplying the rhetorical answer: a year-end message styled after the Queen's Christmas address, declaring 2006 the Year of Build.
The message leans on a 'leaked' internal memo Ozzie reviews at length, and it lands against a rough December backdrop: a Vista Community Technical Preview (Build 5270) shipped mid-month, security is being positioned as fundamental to Vista, yet users report odd IE 7 browser behavior after Microsoft's latest security update — while Microsoft was shut out of the AOL deal, which went to Google instead.
First-order effects
- Ozzie hands Microsoft's developer and partner base an explicit agenda for 2006 — build on Microsoft rather than just buy from it — backed by the CTP cadence such as December's Build 5270 previews of Vista.
- Google's AOL win strips Microsoft of a high-traffic distribution channel at exactly the moment its platform pitch needs reach, making the build-it-yourself framing partly a necessity.
Second-order effects
- Security pressure sharpens the platform story: Microsoft's own researchers just exposed large-scale typo-squatting using multi-layer URL redirection, and a 2004 researcher study found Internet Explorer spent the most days 'known unsafe' among major browsers — so the Year of Build must be sold alongside a credible Vista security fix, not just APIs.
- Rivals reading Ozzie's memo will treat Microsoft's services pivot as confirmation the browser-plus-hosted-applications battleground is where 2006 competitive spending goes.
Third-order effects
- If the Year-of-Build framing holds through 2006, Microsoft's identity shifts from a company that ships finished products to one that operates a platform others extend — a structural change in how its revenue, developer relations, and release cycles are organized.
- A Microsoft forced to compete on openness of its platform, after losing AOL to Google, points toward an industry where distribution deals and developer ecosystems, not box sales, decide the winners.
The trend: Under Ozzie, Microsoft is repositioning itself for 2006 from seller of finished software to host of a buildable platform, pushed by web-services competition and pulled by its own CTO's memo.