Is Windows a genuine advantage?

Stan Beer
Monday, 03 July 2006 17:30

Your IT - Home IT

When Microsoft kicked off its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program late last year in an effort to stamp out the rampant software piracy that has afflicted the company in recent years, it had no inkling that it would itself be lambasted, sued and accused of illegal practices.

The problem for Microsoft appears to be a combination of the software it is using, its implementation policies and its public relations strategies.

On the surface, there would appear to be nothing wrong with the concept of the WGA software program. Microsoft warned everyone in advance that it wanted to crack down on software piracy and WGA seemed a good way to do it. Microsoft assured everyone that it was not intending to prosecute pirate softare users but just to nag them into paying for the genuine article and to stop them getting upgrades such as IE7. However, not only has the implementation of the WGA program appeared ham fisted and clumsy, but the software itself is now viewed by some as being suspect.

The revelation that the WGA software was reporting back to Redmond on a daily basis without the prior knowledge of users was a public relations disaster. Microsoft, as it has claimed, may well have had good reasons for implementing daily check-ins but users were not warned in advance that the product was going to do this. Hence, accusations of spyware have been levelled at the WGA program and a class action law suit has been lodged by a user against Microsoft.

When revelations of the WGA daily check-in surfaced, Microsoft was quick to back-track and assure users that future versions of the WGA software would only check-in once a month. Eventually, said Microsoft, the check-ins would be phased out altogether. The impression conveyed was that Microsoft was scared to death that it had overstepped its bounds and done the wrong thing.

Now there is talk that the WGA software itself is flawed and sometimes wrongly identifies genuine Windows software as pirated versions.

Finally, there has been a lot of FUD circulating in the marketplace due to a less than spectacular performance from Microsoft on the PR front. The company was not decisive in quashing speculation and rumours making the rounds that Microsoft would disable Windows XP on PCs unless they installed WGA. Only when growing user rumblings threatened to explode did Microsoft begrudgingly issue a PR statement denying that it would disable PCs running pirated Windows software.

Microsoft now seems caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, piracy has been a major problem for the company, which no doubt continues to cost the company a lot at a time when its Windows revenues are stagnant. On the other hand, Microsoft's badly bungled anti-piracy exercise has now hampered the company's future efforts to crack down on pirate Windows users. It is interesting to note that not much has been heard of the Office Genuine Advantage program recently.