…we've had conversations with other people. And the work we've done on our contact interchange is just an example of the kinds of things we'll expect to do in the future.
I do think over time IM networks are going to interoperate. It's just challenging from a business perspective for everybody to agree to do that right now.
When it comes to the phone, you have kind of the baseline WAP support; you have the Windows Mobile experience; you announced the deal with Nokia so that there will be an enhanced experience on Nokia devices. What do you make of the iPhone?
Well, I think with the iPhone that Apple just did a super job. It's a very, very nice device. I think that one of the neat things that we have an opportunity to do in our experience with Windows Mobile, and now in this partnership with Nokia, is deliver to a huge broad range of phones the capability to get real-time push access to your services like mail, like calendar and contacts, and instant messaging on those phones.
But I think that the iPhone itself has really done a very nice job in the class of devices.
Given that it has full Safari, maybe Safari support moves up a little higher in terms of how you support it?
Right. We're definitely sort of assessing what we should do on phones in general, because there's lots and lots of different browsers out there. The iPhone has certainly sold quite well, but in the grand scheme of all phones out there with browsers, it's a very small percentage of a phone with a browser.
So, the interesting question for us is, how do we author an experience for phones where you can get to it on any data phone, and then it just looks better as your screen gets bigger? Which is what happens on the iPhone.
Where would you say things are as far as Firefox support, and is it where you want it to be?
I think our Firefox support is quite good. Certainly we work to make sure that we support the right set of standard web experiences, and as Firefox supports those, and as IE supports those, we just go and make it work on those browsers.
Historically, mail and instant messaging have been the high-volume products, but not necessarily extremely profitable. How have they evolved revenue-generating products for Microsoft?
I don't know if we break out our Hotmail and instant-messaging work, but what I'd say generally is the thing we're really focused on is having people love the work we do and love the services we work on.
In general, people who are mail users and Messenger users are also very likely to be MSN users, and they're likely to use Live Search.
We're a company that understands how to be number two or three in an area, and take a better product and come out to be number two or number one
I think that, for us, we don't focus purely on the economics; we focus on first delivering a great customer experience, and then we think that that leads to opportunities for economics, either directly or indirectly, across our network.
So, the direct economics for things such as mail and instant messaging haven't really changed with the shift from the MSN product to Windows Live?
No, the direct economics have not changed.
What are the priorities going forward?
Well, one thing is just continuing to do a better job of helping people bring it all together. In the area of photos we've started, and in the area of files we have a cloud-based solution, but you don't really have a SkyDrive icon on your Windows desktop where you can just drag and drop to upload files to your SkyDrive.
So, one thing that you'll see us do is just go photos, files, and look at how do we bring it together the same way — calendaring — how do we bring it together the same way we brought mail together.
A second direction you're going to see us head is just really doing more between Windows and Windows Live to have the experience of running the product together be very seamless, and just take advantage of the best that both have to offer.
One of the things I'd seen demoed a few years ago, a year and a half ago, and I haven't really seen much since, was this notion that Microsoft could be sort of a meta social network, that you'd be able to check in on what's going on, on all your social networks. Is that still something you guys are pursuing? Where is that?
That's something that directionally is certainly an interesting place for us to head. We don't have any announced plans in that area, but as part of our vision, it's natural for us to think about adding something like that.
So, it's an area of active work, but nothing to announce?
It's an area of active thinking. I'll say it would be consistent with our strategy and approach to do that.
A year from now, when we're chatting about things, what types of things would you like to be looking at and what would be your measures that this has gone well?
The first thing I'd look for is what's the feedback, how many people are using it, how many people like what they've seen, are they happy with the performance, are they happy with the quality, because I think our success is measured by our customers every release of every product we do.
And particularly in the world of services where it's easy for people to try out new things, that customer loyalty and trust is important.
The second thing I'd expect is that we're really making significant progress on the next release of Windows Live. A year from now, we should have made significant progress on what's next.
It should be along the lines of addressing the issues I talked about: how do we get better at delivering a complete experience with Windows? How do we help people bring it all together and manage it online? How do we let people connect across services and communicate and stay in touch? If we've done those things, I think I'll feel quite good.
Then the last thing I'll say is have we enabled people to do it all easily, simply, and in a way that makes them look beautiful and professional? How do we make everybody who's got a digital camera a publisher of beautiful photo albums? How do we make our customers look great?
You talked about being really pleased with where things are across the business. Does that extend to search? I mean, you guys have lost market share in search. The numbers don't seem to be going in the right direction.
I think the thing for me is I just look at where the product is, and I think for me product is a leading indicator of where we're going to end up in the marketplace. The search product is a great product. We've made a tremendous amount of change in a year.
Do we have a challenge to increase usage relative to the product capability? Yes. And that's a challenge that I think we've demonstrated over the past a capability to take on.
We're a company that understands how to be number two or number three in an area, and take a better product and come out to be number two or number one. I think with search what you're seeing us put forward is a product that's ready, and now we'll just go out and have the conversation with customers and get the usage up.
