That was the verdict of Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s top software guru, when I got to ask him last night what he thought about Google’s hugely ambitious attempt to remake email, IM and, um, just about everything else.

He was speaking at the Churchill Club in San Francisco about his efforts to prepare Microsoft for the architectural shift to cloud computing (commenting on the PC-centric view of the world that dominated thinking at the company when he arrived, he confessed: “It was a bit scary”).

But it is his deep thinking and original work around collaboration that has defined most of Ozzie’s career, from Lotus through Groove Networks. So isn’t Wave the culmination of what he himself had been working towards - a collaboration tool with the power to transform the way groups of people work together? Continue reading "Google Wave “is anti-Web”"

Palm’s improbable comeback story got some help on Thursday when a carefully selected group of reviewers gave the new Pre smartphone the thumbs-up.

“Elegant, joyous,” says David Pogue. “It’s a myth, an idea, possibly a legacy,” raves Engadget. The Pre will “certainly give the iPhone and other rivals a run for their money,” declares USA Today.

Nice to see the Pre get over the first hurdle, but there’s a long way to go if it is to save Palm. Continue reading "Palm’s new object of desire"

At the official passing of the Java torch today, Larry Ellison couldn’t resist dangling the suggestion that Oracle is getting ready to launch some sort of new client software platform to rival Google’s Android and - an unspoken challenge - Microsoft.

The Oracle boss was on stage with Scott McNealy at the annual JavaOne event in San Francisco, in what looked like a symbolic ceding of Sun’s leadership of Java after nearly two decades. Continue reading "Is this, finally, the thin client from Oracle?"

If past experience is anything to go by, it may be time to short Cisco Systems.

Being admitted to the Dow Jones Industrial Average is the ultimate mark of corporate respectability - and it has added 5 per cent to Cisco’s shares today - but the history of techs in the Dow has not been a cheerful one.

For many years the brain trust at the DJIA turned a cold shoulder to tech. Only IBM was admitted to the club - and even Big Blue only made it through the door after it had been around for close to 70 years. Continue reading "Tech’s painful Dow hangover"

The forthcoming Windows 7 will be a big test of Microsoft’s ability to segment the market for the operating system and persuade more users to pay up for higher-end versions.

So it isn’t a good sign for the company (though it is a good sign for consumers) if Microsoft is forced to add more capabilities to cheaper versions of the software. Continue reading "Low-end Windows 7: Now, with more Windows 7!"

Has anyone laid claim to the email address barack@gmail.gov yet?

The company refuses to comment, but as the NYT is reporting, and we have confirmed, Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s director of public policy and government affairs, is moving to the White House as deputy chief technology officer.

He won’t be involved in policy decisions on the sort of issues he’s been advocating on behalf of Google. But along with boss Aneesh Chopra, McLaughlin will play an important role in government procurement of technology. Continue reading "Google policy chief heads to the White House"

OK, so Mike Arrington went a bit over the top yesterday in declaring Google Wave “one of the most ambitious and exciting products the tech world has seen in a long while.”

And you have to bear in mind, as Rob Koplowitz at Forrester warns, that any time Google claims to have “reinvented” something it gets the rest of us talking, even if it’s often hard to assess the eventual impact of projects like this (at least it balanced Microsoft’s claim the same day of having reinvented search.)

Still, there was something charmingly excessive about the idea of sending a team of hot-shot developers to Australia for a couple of years to work on a secret project, then jetting them to San Francisco for an 80-minute demo in front of 4,000 eager developers (YouTube video here.) Lars Rasmussen’s rock-star status as creator of Google Maps had already guaranteed him an easy ride in front of this crowd.

In reality, like a lot of these things, Wave is both more and less than it seems. Continue reading "Google Wave: a secret weapon for enterprise?"

Watch out Microsoft: Google is trying to up the pace in its attempt to turn the Web into a platform for applications that fully matches today’s computer operating systems.

That was the clear message today at the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco, which attracted 4,000 people.

The focus of Google’s pitch: HTML5, the next version of the internet markup language, which should exploit more of the capabilities in browsers to produce richer applications and experiences. Among the things Google showed off today were 3D graphics running inside a browser, a way to parcel out computing resources more efficiently so that browsers can handle much heavier workloads, and tools to make browser-based apps continue to function even when offline. Continue reading "Google forces the pace towards next Web platform"