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Jealous Wannabe Blasts Ozzie

I'm always suspicious when a journalist, even one with decent technical chops, calls a true technologist a failure and a bum. Computerworld blogger and longtime Redmond watcher Preston Gralla didn't call Ray Ozzie a bum, but he said something worse to an overachiever like Ray: He said Ozzie is a failure.

This fits the pattern of know-it-all self-proclaimed pundits claiming that Microsoft itself is going down the tubes. For those, I offer this bit of data: A recent IDC report shows that Microsoft drives more IT spending than any other vendor and produces millions of IT jobs.

Now, back to Ozzie. Has he utterly revolutionized Microsoft software? Not yet. Instead, he's laying the groundwork for this revolution through Azure and Web services. Heck, even Bing is turning out to be a solid competitor to Google, or so a dozen or so Redmond Report readers recently told me. Meanwhile, Microsoft is surviving the downturn quite well.

Ozzie, a failure? Nope. But what are your thoughts? What is Mr. Ozzie doing right and wrong? Send you evals to [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on October 14, 2009


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