Eyes Above The Waves

Fairly standard Microsoft press conference contains one very odd quote from Ray Ozzie:

Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who spearheads Microsoft's push into Web services, argued that leading-edge technologies began with consumers. Microsoft's access to consumers gave it a leg up over rivals focused on serving corporations and large organisations, he said.

Who are Microsoft's key rivals? Apple, Google, maybe Yahoo, maybe Adobe, maybe even Mozilla ... all far more end-user focused and less enterprise-oriented than Microsoft. So what is Ozzie talking about? IBM? Surely that's not who Microsoft fear.

I found this comment particularly ironic since Microsoft tends to favour the interests of enterprise customers over other users, e.g. in the timing of IE updates.