Bill Joy on Going Green, Google, Apple, and Microsoft

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asp?symbol=AAPL'>AAPL) to invest in software for the new iPhone and iPod touch platforms. We call it the iFund. We've committed $100 million.

If I were a small investor today looking to catch the next wave on the Web, where would you send me?
We have believed for a long time that mobile computing is the next wave and that there's going to be a wave of innovators in the mobile space. I don't know when these companies will appear, but I think you'll see some exciting IPOs in the mobile space when the public market opens up again, and some of them will probably become the next Yahoos (YHOO), Googles, and Amazons (AMZN).

Is Microsoft's pursuit of Yahoo! over?
Oh, I don't know. I saw a quote today in which Gates said it was over, and I take him at his word. The whole thing is a mystery to me.

If you were in Steve Ballmer's shoes, how would you challenge Google in online ads?
It seems like a pretty daunting task. When I was at Sun, we competed with Microsoft—and not always successfully. Maybe Ballmer now knows how we felt. Google has a very strong position, and it's hired an enormous number of very smart people and is really committed to innovation. I think Microsoft has depended for a very long time on certain businesses that were essentially annuities, but it's going to have to create some really new things if it wants to capture the excitement again.

Why do you think the innovation has slowed?
I think what happened is [Microsoft] made the PC platform relatively uninteresting by dominating the application space so strongly, and for a period of years nothing much changed there. And that happened sort of when they created the Office franchise. The blossoming of creativity only really emerged again when the Internet browser came along. I don't think there's a single Microsoft site that's so compelling that if it disappeared, people would care very much. Some analysts have suggested that instead of buying Yahoo, maybe Microsoft should buy a bunch of innovative smaller companies. I think there's certain amount of truth to that.

Would you like to see Google do something with Yahoo?
If Google wants to do something with Yahoo, that's fine. I'm much more interested in going to the next level of having information on the Web organized. First we were excited because we could get at tons of stuff. Now we need it to be organized better so we can learn and explore more conveniently. I use Wikipedia a lot. I'd love to see some tools for creating order out of chaos in the same way for the larger Internet. I'm hoping Google—as well as small companies—will come up with some great innovations for organizing knowledge.

Maria Bartiromo is the anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell.