Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Microsoft insists that Windows Live is not just an attempt to rebrand its MSN services business. This is probably a good move, given that MSN is going backwards fast. However, there is no doubt that Windows Live is a fresh attempt by Microsoft to win marketshare in the online space where Google and Yahoo dominate.
A fact that Bill Gates himself has articulated clearly, is that
Microsoft has been losing badly on the internet battle front to the
pure internet players Google and Yahoo. For a company like Microsoft,
which is already at the top of the tree in the desktop space, there is
only one direction to go unless it can translate its desktop success
into the online world. Therefore Windows Live is the place where
Microsoft will be spending much of its R&D investment resources.
The MSN business segment has been a dismal failure for Microsoft and
the company obviously wants a fresh start with Windows Live, which in
the first instance replaces the existing Hotmail and Windows Instant
Messager products with new and improved Live branded systems, plus a
host of other web services to compete with the online players. Live
Mail will include 2GB of storage and will be faster than Hotmail
because it uses the new Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
technology, while the Live Messenger instant messaging service will be
based on a similar peer-to-peer file sharing technology to that
employed by products like Skype.
There will also be a suite of products called Office Live, which
includes an ad supported system for micro-businesses to set up free web
pages with email accounts. Other goodies in the basket include local
search and mapping services plus a subscription-based PC security
service. In addition, there will be web based contact management and
rudimentary booking keeping systems. And, of course, in the true
Microsoft proprietary tradition, the data, which can be stored on
Microsoft's servers, will only exportable to Microsoft Office desktop
products.
As the pundits and critics have pointed out, there is not much if
anything that Microsoft has flagged so far that is not already
available from the major internet players. However, Microsoft knows it
has to make a serious fist of playing in the web services space because
it's the future of computing and it's where the growth is. Microsoft
may also insist that its Windows desktop and Windows Live divisions are
working totally separately but it's a fair bet that Windows Vista and
Windows Live will be tightly integrated.
Some might say that, given Microsoft is still the most successful IT
company in history, it's being a touch melodramatic to say the
company's future depends on the success of its online strategy, as
embodied in Windows Live. However, the startling growth of Google,
compared to the stagnating growth of Microsoft's Windows and Office
divisions, show that unless the software giant can gain traction in the
internet space, it will be like a beached whale suffering a slow
painful death by a thousand cuts.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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