"He has been extremely reluctant to do anything that would seem like an act of bravado against Microsoft," says a person who had an insight into his thinking from his early days at Google.

About 25 years ago, Wegner and his collaborator andfuture wife, Toni, had an insight into how memory works, sparked by a questionabout where they had stored a sponge used for washing the car.

Tim had also given me some insight into the real world of contributing to an open source project, demystifying the process of implementing a specification and working with the community.