John Battelle  wrote an article on Ray Ozzie who now works for Microsoft in the current issue of Business 2.0.  I read John Battelle’s blog regularly, am subscribed to his RSS feed but did not know much about Ray Ozzie.

One thing in the article really stood out to me, a saying, and I’m sure it’s Battelle’s craft as a writer that he managed to capture this moment:

Most of these Web applications are free. Isn’t it hard to compete with that price?

Well, the business model of services in the consumer realm is largely advertising. That’s the economic engine that Google has proven out, one that generates cash that can be used to disrupt other things. To take advantage of it, Microsoft just has to build that economic engine itself. But we’re not going to be reckless about introducing free services in markets where consumers are willing to pay for software. And my intuition says that people don’t want ads jumping around in cells on a spreadsheet. Still, there are many developing markets where we can’t even sell our software right now because the people there can’t afford it.

It got me to imagine what it would be like if there were PPC ads jumping around on my spreadsheets, PPT or Word Files.  

I never heard anyone bring it down to that level - Certainly don’t want to see ads juming around on my Excel Spreadsheets.