Eye on the Web: Microsoft Weaves a New Web

Andrea Dudrow

I’m all for technology. Since I was a kid, I’ve imagined a way cool future where we replicate our meals, a la “Star Trek;” zip to work in a hovercraft like George Jetson; and speak to our kitchen appliances like the castaways in “Lost in Space.” I know videophones are but a blip away, and that before long my dishwasher will interface with my refrigerator. I’ll have a terminal in my kitchen for looking up recipes on the Web, and an ebook screen in my bathroom so I can read “War and Peace” while I shower. And of course I’ll never have to visit the mall again because everything I need will be available over the Web.

Enter Microsoft
If Microsoft has its way, and the Redmond giant usually does, this day will come sooner rather than later. As part of its recently announced .Net business model (you guessed it, all Internet all the time), Microsoft says it will move to a subscription-based system over time, departing from its shrink-wrapped, license-in-the-box software sales structure. Under the new plan, consumers will download software from the Web, and pay a monthly fee for its use. The software, such as Windows and Microsoft Office, would be distributed by licensed ASPs (application service providers). The monthly rate will approximate the cost of the shrink-wrapped version divided by 24.

Other arms of Microsoft’s .Net strategy involve consumers storing all of their data on the Web as well (sound anything like Larry Ellison’s network computer?), and using XML (extensible markup language — a whiz-bang Internet technology) to deliver that data to you on any device that tickles your fancy, be it laptop, cell phone, or digital organizer. But the question may be: will it fly?

Maybe. The precedent for Web-distributed software has already been set. From Web-based e-mail, to games like “Doom” and “Quake” that can be played over the Internet, right up to ebooks and file-sharing software such as Napster, more and more trappings of our lives have been quietly migrating to the Web. Heck, two of the biggest fixtures of American life, gambling and porn, have long been residents of the wired future.

What is this “Pay?”
But there may be an important difference. While nearly everything you can get from the Web is free these days (except, of course, those cute gabardine pants from J.Crew), Microsoft wants us to pay a price for its services, and a hefty one at that. For a company that skipped from Windows 95 to Windows 98, it seems a bit presumptuous to essentially ask customers to adhere to a tighter revision schedule. A schedule that the company may well not keep. Besides, I have a right to use out-dated software and out-moded technology when I want to, like riding an old bike or driving an old car — sometimes one just doesn’t need the latest bells and whistles. And how many software revisions have hit the market crawling with bugs? With the new subscription model, Microsoft might be even more prone to using its customers as unwitting beta testers.

There is some hope for the fearful among us. Though Microsoft clearly dominates much of the offline software arena (and even, it seems, a bit of the Web browser arena), the Web is a funny animal, as many an Internet entrepreneur can tell you. There’s no telling what will succeed and what will fail when you are dealing with a public you can’t see or talk to. You have to wait until they tell you.

Back to the Garage, All Ye Hackers
I’m hoping the Web users of the world tell Microsoft they don’t want to pay more for less — that they’d just as soon use software written by a 19-year-old college drop-out who hasn’t (yet) built a global software empire than be tied to a monthly bill for those Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. While I’ll be tickled and giddy when I can finally set my toaster to start toasting when my alarm clock tells it to and program my video phone not to accept calls from exes, I want to be sure I have a choice of video-phone operating systems, and can opt for an interactive refrigerator that runs Linux. The Web is the closest thing we have to an anarchy, after all.

Read more by Andrea Dudrow.