Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 06 December 2007 15:54
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 4
In addition, online software suites and Web 2.0 applications such as Salesforce, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Zoho, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, MySpace and others are also changing the way that people use software, and what service they are pay for, instead of paying for a specific product.
Google and others have generally been charging for ‘pro’ or business versions of some of their online and offline apps, or simply for access to additional storage, with online advertising also paying incredible dividends for Google, great dividends for Yahoo and good dividends for Microsoft in the search engine and targeted advertising stakes alone.
Microsoft have developed monthly income streams of their own, too, through services such as Xbox Live and their Office Live portal (among others) that lets you store and share documents, create a business website, share calendars and some other stuff but not actually edit and create Office documents online from anywhere as yet, as offered by an growing number of competitors all trying to take as big a bite as they can from Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar Office revenue.
So, it’s clear that companies have found, through the Internet, more than one way to be paid for their efforts, but that there’s still plenty of software being sold at the retail level, whether pre-loaded onto new computers, such as Office 2007 Business Edition, whether boxed in stores or downloaded from an online store to run locally, although online software and a range of third party and open source software, freely available or at low cost is changing more this year than ever before.
And one of the ways to earn additional revenue in a world of rampant piracy is to try and get some of the pirates to pay up. Thanks to the connected nature of the Internet, Microsoft has been able to use the knowledge of which computers are running genuine versions of Office and Windows, and which computers are running non-genuine versions.
Microsoft has been able to use this PC-by-PC knowledge of computers that have gone through the WGA process to persuade some non-genuine users to buy a discounted license on the spot, generating new revenue from pirates (whether knowing or not) Microsoft had no real way of detecting en masse before the Internet, activation and the WGA and OGA programs aside from people notifying the Business Software Alliance (BSA) of cases of infringement.
This happens with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Office 2003 and Office 2007 thanks to their respective WGA and OGA programs. If a user installs the update to the Windows Genuine Advantage program for XP SP2, if it hasn’t already been installed, it will check your copy of Windows to see if it is genuine or not.
Non-genuine copies of XP are usually have activated bypassed by use of a volume license key, although WGA now detects these copies and notifies users upon log-on that their copy is non-genuine, disables their background and places an icon in their toolbar which, if click, informs users of their non-genuine status and offers, through a separate website, the ability to purchase a digital license on the spot with a credit card to instantly turn their copy of XP into a genuine one.
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