Needless to say, , via its Flack du Flacks, Frank Shaw:

At the highest level, we think about innovation in relation to its ability to have a positive impact in the world. For Microsoft, it is not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact.... for a company whose products touch vast numbers of people, what matters is innovation at scale, not just innovation at speed.

In other words: What really matters is that a billion people use your products, even if they mostly suck. Which means that, despite getting beaten like a pair of bongos in every new market it has entered over the last decade, Microsoft still hasn't woken up and smelled the Starbucks.

It's not surprising. I remember sitting in a conference room with a couple of bright Micro-geeks more than 10 years ago. This was around the time during one of Microsoft's various antitrust trials, and when companies as conservative as Compaq were volunteering information about how from its line of Presario PCs.

I asked them what they thought of these things.