Microsoft eyes making desktop apps free

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You bet

Except they'd need to step up their spell check & grammar analyzer so there would have been a flag you used "add" instead of "ad".

Will you see it in the business environment? Yes. But a number of different avenues might branch from Microsoft's efforts:

In one of several ways:

1) Microsoft performs their normal research with test versions, finds out people get p%ssed off, and they abandon the idea.
2) The ads go into the business environment, people get used it the ads and ignore them.
3) The ads go into the business environment, people get steamed, management gets p%ssed off over the loss of productivity and listening to people vent about the ads, so they switch to Linux and OpenOffice. Don't forget: Microsoft has a patent on MS Office's XML file structure. Microsoft could force Office to store everything in XML, preventing everyone from running Open Office and MS Office side-by-side. You'd be able to read the XML, but not write it [from Open Office et alia]. So businesses would start the march of migrating from MS Office (currently, Microsoft's cash cow, 1/3 of their profit) to Open Office -- which will only have ads in implementations distributed by businesses with a death wish.
4) Someone writes a utility to clobber the ads and the business world doesn't see the ads any more. And before you think of the legal ramifications of this halting it, remember what happened when Claria (nee' Gator) - and it was Gator at the time, popped up ads of their clients over ads displayed in browsers. They found themselves in court. Guess who won? (hint: it wasn't the plaintiffs) I would surmise Microsoft would bury something in their EULA stating you can't do it. But they also have material buried in their XP EULA which says you can't use desktop control software to control XP except other XP machines. So all of the software which is used [instead], is technically in violation of the EULA. Microsoft's getting awfully fussy about their selective enforcement of the EULA.
5) Microsoft continues to go crazy, trying to figure out how to get corporations to upgrade from Win2K. There are hundreds of thousands of licensed copies of Win2K running in lots 'n lots of offices. Microsoft is chasing their collective tails, trying to find a way to get them to upgrade from 2000, which went completely out of service June 30. They're running Office 2000, VS 6, and have no intention of screwing up the TCO, which continues to drop as the number of workarounds increases and the number of known problems remains manageable. These places have absolutely no reason to budge. Ads or not, Microsoft has a higher priority on their agenda: getting Brer Rabbit(s) out of the briar patch. The ads issue is long(er) term, but the briar patch is something they have to address first.

Posted by: Mihi Nomen Est   Posted on: 11/15/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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