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Gates says goodbye, Live Search demo wows at Microsoft's annual meeting

Time: 00:04 EST/05:04 GMT | News Source: ComputerWorld | Posted By: Kenneth van Surksum

One last chance to hear Bill Gates speak before he leaves the company he co-founded to head up his humanitarian efforts drew tens of thousands of Microsoft employees to the company's annual meeting at Safeco Field in Seattle late last week.

But garnering the most buzz, according to attendees blogging about Thursday's event, was a demo of Microsoft's revamp to its flagship Web search engine, which is expected to be launched later this month. Additionally, CEO Steve Ballmer's rousing call for Microsoft to be "bold" and incorporate great design into its products -- the strategy that has lifted rival Apple Inc. -- made a big impression.

Others hailed Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie's speech on Microsoft's "software+services" vision, and the awarding of a new technical award to the longtime Microsoft engineer who headed up the development of Windows NT among other products.