Saturday, June 28, 2008

Vice president nurtures Microsoft's relations

Dan'l Lewin interview excerpt (via Don Dodge)

Lewin sat down this week at his office in Mountain View to answer a few questions about his role with Microsoft. He declined, however, to talk about Microsoft's failed attempt in recent months to acquire Yahoo Inc. or the Sunnyvale portal's search business.

Q: How many startups does Microsoft look at in a year?

A: Microsoft looks at 1,200 startups a year and develops relationships with around 200.

Q: Which technologies are important to Microsoft right now?

A: The (biggest) interest is in Silverlight. It's a terrifically powerful and very efficient technology for doing next-generation video across platforms and in a browser.

New areas picking up traction are XNA architecture - a gaming architecture - and there's a lot of interest around robotics and surface technology.

There's also traction around Amazon and cloud and chat ... we'll have more to say about that in the not-too-distant future.

Vice president nurtures Microsoft's relations

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