Web2.0? I'll give you Web2.0!

It looks like Microsofts latest and most unusual CTO choice Ray Ozzie is coming into his own at the Redmond software giant.

Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes and founder of Groove Networks, is the pioneer and undisputed champion of collaboration software, and apparently finding ways for people to meaningfully connect each others' efforts is still at the top of his mind.

Yesterday Ozzie announced"Live Clipboard", a Java based application that will allow copying structured information from PC to website or website to website much in the way Microsoft's Clipboard now works beteen its own applications. Ozzie demonstrated how he dropped contact information from his Outlook into an online shopping checkout page, and location data from his blog onto a social networking site.

To make the point that this is not just another proprietary Microsoft interface, he used Firefox for the demo. Apparently the intention is for Microsoft to freely licence Live Clipboard under the Creative Commons licence.

Web-based? Browser-independent? Creative Commons? You'd almost think Google, not Microsoft. But then again, I'm one of those people who regularly wonder how history would be changed if Ozzie would've chosen Google and Vint Cerf worked at Microsoft, instead of the other way round...