Microsoft has a new brain. Ray Ozzie, a white-haired Chicago native with a courtly manner, is in many ways the anti-Bill Gates. More mild and conciliatory in style, he has none of the intensity that the Microsoft co-founder, his body rocking back and forth as he answers even the most seemingly innocuous question, always projects.

Yet make no mistake: Mr Ozzie?s new role at the head of the world?s most powerful software development organisation marks the emergence of a ferocious technology intellect. By promoting a man whose approach to software development may be more in keeping with the Google-obsessed era in which we live, it could also signal the latest in a series of internal revolutions that have proved how dangerous it is to underestimate Microsoft, a company often written off in the technology world as a lumbering giant unsuited to the changing times.