Text 8189, 53 rader
Skriven 2005-11-13 09:05:38 av Mike '/m' (1:379/45)
Ärende: Microsoft Is Leaking Internal Documents to Make Us Think They Have a Pl
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From: Mike '/m' <mike@barkto.com>


http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051110.html

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Microsoft Is Leaking Internal Documents to Make Us Think They Have a Plan

Oscar Wilde said that the only thing worse than people talking about you is
people NOT talking about you, and it must have been with this in mind that
Microsoft recently "leaked" two company-wide memos concerning the Redmond's new
strategic direction -- its so-called Live strategy that I wrote about last
week. My plan for this column had been to detail what I believe will be
Google's upcoming web services strategy, but that will have to wait a week
since these memos are simply too juicy to ignore.

Please read both documents, which can be reached through this week's links. Do
that right now. I'll wait for you.

While ostensibly written solely for internal discussion, the documents from
Bill Gates and new Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie were clearly supposed to be leaked.
These are external marketing documents -- the equivalent of those ubiquitous
white papers -- only Microsoft is pretending they aren't. We won't see any
witch hunt at Microsoft trying to find the leaker, because I'm sure he or she
was just following orders. With this in mind, then, let's decide what is the
real message here.

Microsoft always needs a bogeyman, and in this case, it is Google. There can be
only one devil, so Yahoo is dismissed as a "media company" and AOL is ignored
completely. This is not a realistic competitive scenario. While AOL's position
is uncertain given current ownership discussions with Microsoft and others, in
web services, Yahoo represents as big a threat to Microsoft as Google.

But I have to say that Gates or Ozzie or whoever actually wrote these documents
has done a very effective job of differentiating the company roles in a way
that makes Google appear to be the bad guy, and Microsoft appear to be the good
guy. Google is going to develop and deploy Internet services while Microsoft is
going to ENABLE the deployment of such services BY ITS DEVELOPER PARTNERS. This
makes Google the would-be monopolist.

Looking deeper, though, we see that the only way Microsoft can achieve its
vision is by continuing to own the platform. They want us to be GRATEFUL, in
fact, that such an enlightened outfit is running the store. And this will work
to an extent, but only to an extent. Then what happens? All hell breaks loose
as Microsoft again changes the game. Here's how:...
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 /m

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