Gosh, what have we here? Have some leaked internal memos from Bill Gates and recently-appointed CTO, Ray Ozzie, shown up all over the Web? I am too tired to go ferreting out whether this is a real leak, and the blogosphere is now so quick at disseminating juicy news, or whether it is just a PR stunt made to look like a leak. Let me be generous and think that it is the former for now.

These kinds of memos provoke less interest than they did way back in 1998, because employee blogs like Mini-Microsoft regularly dissect - and often criticize - Microsoft's strategy from within, providing a view to outsiders that would have been unthinkable seven years ago.

For instance, Mini-Microsoft has just all but called the new Visual Studio a buggy piece of rubbish. So have lots of developers.

But I digress. The new memos are interesting. Firstly the timing is interesting. It is nearly the fifth anniversary of .Net, and the tenth anniversary of chairman Bill's Internet memo. The latest memo from Gates announces the five-yearly sea change, and Ray Ozzie's essay describes it in detail in a fascinating cross between brilliant insight, Microsoft Kool Aid and a new (and I think fatal) attitude towards the company's core business.

This time it is not about the Internet or a new way to develop software. It is about services. Explains Ozzie: "Computing and communications technologies have dramatically and progressively improved to enable the viability of a services-based model. The ubiquity of broadband and wireless networking has changed the nature of how people interact, and they are increasingly drawn toward the simplicity of services and service-enabled software that 'just works'. Businesses are increasingly considering what services-based economics of scale might do to help them reduce infrastructure costs, or deploy solutions as needed and on a subscription basis."