Ray Ozzie's role in Microsoft's Yahoo offer

Bloomberg has a good piece explaining the role Ray Ozzie is playing in Microsoft's bid for Yahoo.

Ozzie, you'll remember, was running Groove Networks up in Beverly until 2005, when Microsoft bought him (whoops, his company) and made him one of its CTOs. He now fills Bill Gates' shoes as Microsoft's chief software architect.

From Crayton Harrison's piece:

Ozzie, 52, plans to use the Internet to complement Microsoft's software for consumers and businesses, marrying programs with information available online. When Microsoft held a video conference for employees today about the Yahoo bid, it was Ozzie who explained how the companies' technologies would fit together, spokesman Bill Cox said.

``He really understands technology and where it's going,'' said Ken Allen, a portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. in Baltimore, the fifth-biggest institutional holder of Microsoft shares.

Ozzie blogs (he was one of the first Boston tech execs to do so), but not very regularly.

'Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days'

Just finished reading Jessica Livingston's 'Founders at Work' over the weekend. It's a compilation of interviews with enterpreneurs -- many of them from the Boston area.

So few books are published that deal with building companies here...and Jessica gets into the nitty-gritty: relationships with co-founders, negotiations with VCs, competing with bigger players.

The Boston entrepreneurs interviewed in the book include:

- Dan Bricklin, Software Arts (VisiCalc spreadsheet)
- Mitchell Kapor, Lotus Development Corp.
- Ray Ozzie, Groove Networks (Ray is now chief software architect of Microsoft)
- Paul Graham, Viaweb (Graham went on to start Y Combinator, the early stage venture firm in Cambridge, where Livingston works)
- Philip Greenspun, ArsDigita (now a blogger and flight instructor)
- Stephen Kaufer, TripAdvisor
- Ron Gruner, Alliant Computer Systems and Shareholder.com
- James Currier, Tickle (Tickle was founded in Boston as Emode, and then moved out to San Francisco before being acquired by Monster.com)
- Bob Davis, Lycos (now a VC at Highland Capital Partners in Lexington)

Amazingly, there's a blurb on the back cover from Bill Kaiser of the venture firm Greylock Partners, which was involved in a very public battle with ArsDigita founder Philip Greenspun (it's recounted in Greenspun's chapter, in piquant detail)