Big news for Small Pieces

April 24, 2008 in Ideas, News | 4 comments

Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger‘s book from several years back, makes its point in the now-famous Ray Ozzie memo explaining Microsoft’s sex change (from a software to a Web company).

4 comments

  1. mary hodder’s avatar

    mary hodder on April 24, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    you totally crack me up doc. funny. ( mean the sex change remark.. it’s perfect).

  2. Don Marti’s avatar

    Don Marti on April 24, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    HTML copy of that memo.

    A maker of desktop and browser software going into into online advertising is like the maker of the Walkman buying a music label.

  3. Mike Warot’s avatar

    Mike Warot on April 24, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    This doesn’t change anything for Microsoft, it merely prolongs the life of the desktop by virtualizing it a bit. You still have folders of stuff, instead of microcontent. You still have a single sign on authority, Microsoft’s LiveID, instead of OpenID. You still have a system which has to have everything virus scanned.
    It really doesn’t change squat.
    –Mike–

  4. Doc Searls’s avatar

    Doc Searls on April 24, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    Thanks for the pointer, Don.

    I love the analogy. As Mike suggests, when you subtract the buzzjive from the memo, you’ve still got a new walled garden. Need to read it more carefully, though. It’s hard without antihistamines.

    The Sony analogy reminds me of how, a few years back, I asked somebody at Sony’s CES booth why they were letting Apple clean their clock, and didn’t have handheld devices that recorded in and played back in MP3, Ogg, or something other than their own silly ATRAC codec. The guy told me they needed to “protect” their “content” products in their entertainment divisions from “piracy”. I replied, “That must be the ‘synergy’ I’ve been hearing about.”

Comments are now closed.