Bill Gates has left the building – almost. In July 2008, the self-made billionaire will make his final exit from Microsoft. Gates will focus on his philanthropic activities, and his role will be taken over and shared by two Microsoft veterans: Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. Ozzie will be Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, looking after technical strategy and product architecture, but Mundie has the role of setting Microsoft's strategy across the board as well as heading up all of Microsoft's research and development.

In this exclusive interview with APC, Mundie says the notion of all software delivered entirely through the web browser is now widely recognised as being 'popular mythology'. He also stakes the claim that Google's existence and success was contingent on Microsoft creating Windows. He talks about what's coming down the pipeline for future versions of Windows, and his belief that Windows can get still more market share than it has today. He also discusses the issues around the recent controversy over the Office Open XML file format.