Will this be the final nail in Microsoft's Coffin?

[Carol Haynes]

Interesting article in today's Desktop Pipeline newsletter entitled "Microsoft Knows Where You Live . . . Or Soon Will" which I have quoted below.

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Here is the article:

Editor's Note: Microsoft Knows Where You Live . . . Or Soon Will

This week was almost All-Microsoft-All-The-Time as the Redmond software giant made so much news it was hard to keep up. The company announced its earnings forecast for the next year and took lots of lumps from analysts because it expected lower earnings. The reason, it seems, is that Gates & Co. are building a war chest of a couple of billion dollars to go after Google. (See this morning's New York Times story.)

But what does that have to do with the other Microsoft news of the week, that the company is casting a wider net for pirated Windows and even gearing up to go after pirated copies of Office? Actually plenty, I think. I would cite one more story from last week: "Microsoft Nearly Finished With Windows Live ID Deployment."

When Microsoft announced it had gotten religion about Web service and started rebranding everything "Live" last year I was skeptical. I'm not anymore. Microsoft is going full tilt at becoming an advertising-driven company. And the first step is to make sure it owns its customers.

For years Microsoft has had a . . . difficult . . . relationship with its customers. I'm not talking about all the Microsoft customers who hate the company. I'm talking about Microsoft's very early realization that software buyers need a lot of support -- a LOT of support -- and if you provided as much support as they wanted you'd never make a dime on them.

So it just didn't do support. You bought a PC with Windows on it and whose customer were you? Not Microsoft's. Microsoft didn't want to hear from you. If you had trouble with your OS you had to call the PC maker.

As long as business was good Microsoft didn't care too much if some copies of Windows and Office weren't official and registered. Piracy was less costly than customer service.

But (a) business isn't so good anymore, and (b) the business model is changing. (It's not the first time, either -- remember when Microsoft discovered desperate PC owners would actually pay for tech support? Suddenly there were phone numbers you could call.) It's the business model change that's the biggest driver of the anti-piracy campaigns, I think. If Microsoft is going to be an advertising company, it's going to need to know a lot more about its customers -- like who they are and where they live and how much money they make and what they like to do on weekends. If Windows Live ID actually does manage to get single-sign-on right for Microsoft (something the Passport program apparently never quite did) and does get tied to Microsoft's registration databases, pretty soon only the IRS and your mother will know more about you than Microsoft. And I'm not really sure about your mother.

David DeJean
Editor, Desktop Pipeline
www.DesktopPipeline.com

[Cpilot]

Interesting read.

I understand people's concern over privacy on the net and what not. Really I do.
But I also believe that it might be too little too late.
I mean for years no one ever minded giving up their social security number here in the U.S. whenever it was asked for.
It got to the point that it became easy to violate others privacy with a S.S. number, birth date and name.
Auto Star is a big thing here, a cell phone, computer monitoring, gps addition to their automobiles. People able to monitor any ones location with it and monitor what the vehicle does and such. Even collecting data during impact. (I'm sure insurance companies are salivating over that). How about the collection of data by credit reporting agencies?

My point being is that for decades the majority of people have been willing to allow access to their private information and I honestly believe that the government and private organizations feel they are entitled to it.
And I have heard too many people proclaim the old "If you ain't got nothing to hide then why worry about it" refrain. Which means that they really don't get it, it has nothing to do with hiding anything....it has to do with how much privacy are we entitled to.


Society has already abrogated the idea of privacy.

[Carol Haynes]

From a purely practical point of view I wonder how many computer users are going to allow this level of intrusion when they already have alternatives that don't require this level of intrusion? I wonder if people will feel more inclinded to stick with Windows 2000 (or even XP which doesn't go nearly this far), unpatched if necessary, and Office 2000/XP rather than move on to new products where you are paying large amounts of money regularly just to use software! OK you could argue that it happens with upgrading versions at the moment but firstly these are optional (there are still loads of people using Win98/Office 97 even in commercial environments) and secondly would anyone expect MS to make this cheaper in the long run - it doesn't seem to be born out by experience!

[f0dder]

One thing is for sure: if there's any way I can help it, XP is going to be my last Microsoft OS. No way in hell I'm moving to Vista if it's not bleeding necessary. Mac OS X os linux, though? Linux isn't ready, but Apple might turn out to be as greedy and DRM-fascistoid as MS

[mouser]

Apple might turn out to be as greedy and DRM-fascistoid as MS

might??

[f0dder]

Apple might turn out to be as greedy and DRM-fascistoid as MS

might??

-mouser (May 03, 2006, 05:47 AM)

I haven't tried Mac OS X yet, so I can't tell (will your audio outputs be disabled if they're analog and you want to play an mp3? Or will your digital output be disabled if the device on the other end doesn't support copyright restriction? etc...)