Steve Ballmer gives an interview to the FT, the summary is here. From it:
Microsoft’s next big challenge is to address the threat posed by advertising-supported business models such as Google’s, Steve Ballmer, chief executive, signalled on Monday as the software group launched Vista, its new operating system.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Ballmer said that, having focused on the threat posed by open source software over the past few years, the company had now turned its attention to advertising-funded business models.
That means, I presume, that all those Vista engineers have now been tasked to focus on search. Ballmer spend a lot of the interview talking about search. In short: The order has come from the bridge of the aircraft carrier: Turn toward search and advertising models, full steam ahead!
We’ll see how the USS Microsoft has fared in three years, when that turn is complete….