Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie reckons open source programmers' freedom from answering to shareholders makes open source a greater threat to Microsoft than Google.

Microsoft is clearly worried about Google as a competitive threat. But the bigger worry continues to be open source, according to Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie.

Ozzie, speaking at Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York on Wednesday, said that while Google is a "tremendously strong competitor...open source was much more potentially disruptive" to Microsoft's business model.

Ozzie said that since many open-source programmers aren't beholden to shareholders they potentially represent a more formidable force in the market.

However, comptetition from open source software has also spurred innovation at Microsoft, according to Ozzie. Open source has "made Microsoft a much stronger company" by driving changes to Microsoft's products to make them interoperable with open-source products.

Operating systems of the future are likely to spill beyond single devices, according to Ozzie. Instead, it might be something that gives users access to data running across multiple devices, like PCs, TVs, cars, etc. "Instead of the computer being at the center, you (the user) are at the center," he said.

Microsoft's pursuit of Yahoo "was not a strategy unto itself," Ozzie said. "It was an accelerator to the ad platform."

Ozzie might elaborate on that operating-system-of-the-future idea at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference, slated to take place in October in Los Angeles. Ozzie is giving the keynote speech at the event, and the company is expected to have a broader beta of Live Mesh — part of its Live platform strategy — and offer a clearer picture of its overall services push.

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