Microsoft's plans for the future

Put simply, Ozzie's assignment is to Webify everything: To intertwine Microsoft's entire product line - software for consumers, software for businesses, Xboxes, all of it - with the vast and ever-growing power of the Net.

"Everything we do should have a presence on the Web," Ozzie says.

Whereas PC software draws mainly on resources on your hard drive, this new software will rely heavily on the "cloud," as they call the Net at Microsoft. The company is planning a suite of applications that run on this new hybrid platform, just as Office and other software run on Windows PCs.