"The combination of real time server based and peer-to-peer communications will clearly be a significant enhancement, so you can expect that as part of our product planning for the next major wave. We are expecting to use it very broadly," said Jeff Raikes, group vice president in charge of Microsoft's Information Worker Business unit.

I'm reminded of what Jon Udell had to say two years ago:

InfoWorld- Uniting under Groove- February 14, 2003- By Jon Udell ...

"Groove founder Ray Ozzie and his teams have always pretended to build application software. But what they have actually delivered are the operating systems of the future — years ahead of schedule.

It defines what Microsoft and Apple will be lucky to achieve by 2006. "

Ray Ozzie says:

"I think what Bill is referring to is that some of those technologies, particularly security, have more general applicability than the general collaboration offerings. It's too soon to know or discuss what the specific impact will be, but I will be working with the platform group to see (how) those things that we've done can be generalized."

 Meta Group analyst Mike Gotta said Groove's middleware should benefit Microsoft's next-generation operating system, Longhorn, due in 2006.

"Groove has invested a lot of its intellectual property in its middleware," Gotta said. "Everyone tends to talk about the client and gets enamored with Virtual Office. But the crown jewel is not the desktop application. The crown jewel is all of the middleware and the security model around it and the fact that it is firewall friendly."

My 2 Cents:

I guess the acquirement will be finished in late June/early July. They have to deal with some law issue both in American and Euro. Because it's a buy from Microsoft.

Groove will be adopted in the following route:

Integrate it into the Office Suite(Sharepoint, Live Communication Server especially) --->MSN Desktop--->OS(Longhorn)  Groove Network has invested lots of time and effort to release Web Service Development Ket(GWSDK). Though it's not that powerful compared to the COM/Interop tool level development. However the team is eager to hear its partner's voice. For example, I asked Message History management web service when they release 3.0(f) and I got it the day before yesterday in 3.1. Support from GN is famous and I am sure we will get better support from MS later.

And my suspection: Groove,as-we-know, will vanish later. MS buy Groove as an investment for Office 12, MSN and Longhorn.