"'leaked' memo has interesting content" Recently a Microsoft memo was supposedly "leaked". It seems pretty obvious to everyone that it was actually deliberately released, but never mind that. The real question is whether the memo was written with an eye toward the planned release or was a genuine internal document that they then decided to throw out to the press.
Knowing Microsoft, you'd bet on the former.
But on the other hand.. do they really believe this stuff? Entitled "The Internet Services Disruption", the memo paints Microsoft as a prescient innovator. For example. When we reflected upon our dreams just five years later in 1995,
the impetus for our new center of gravity came from the then-nascent
web. With a clear view upon the challenges and opportunities it
presented, the entire company pivoted to focus on the internet to
pursue that fully connected dream with support for internet standards
throughout our product line: a web browser, server and development
tools, and a service in MSN that was transformed into a web portal.
Many things we developed in that era continue to fuel the growth
of todays internet: the technologies of AJAX DHTML and XMLHTTP
were created in 1998 and used in products such as OWA.