SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. extended an olive branch to some of its harshest critics on Tuesday by proposing a way for Internet users to "cut and paste" live Web data across different sites, just as they can between computer programs.
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief technical officer, told a conference of top Web developers here that his company wants to openly license a simple technology for sharing data between Web and computer programs -- whether Microsoft-controlled or not.
"Live Clipboard," as the concept technology is known, would take the widely used clipboard feature common to many computer programs and extend it to the Web, allowing users to share organized data between Web sites or move it into PC programs.