Microsoft's ambitions are huge and surprising, because they have to be

The one giant of the American tech industry that's transforming faster and more violently than all the others is Microsoft. Today's Build 2016 event was a marathon two-hour affair, but it was almost completely devoid of incremental or iterative improvements. Dead-end projects like Windows Phone didn't even get a mention. Everything Microsoft showed was about addressing the next big change in how we interact with technology, whether that comes in the form of virtual and augmented reality, the development of more natural inputs like handwriting and conversation, or the eyebrow-raising concept of AI bots talking to other AI bots. It was an event filled with uncynical enthusiasm for the potential that lay beyond the immediate horizon.