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Microsoft: save $44 billion, just make Hotmail free
47 comments- TAGS:competition, Google, Microsoft, Web-based applications, Yahoo!
- IT TOPICS:Business Intelligence, Internet, Management, Windows & Microsoft
I took a look at MSN – oops, Windows Live -- yesterday, something I try to do every year or so (which puts me ahead of most people, apparently). What I saw reminded me why spending $44 billion on Yahoo! isn't going to make Microsoft competitive with Google.
I love Google's Gmail. It's free, and it lets me do all kinds of fancy things. I especially like the ability to collect mail from other POP3 accounts in Gmail, where I can see threaded discussions, search and categorize messages, and get to it from anywhere I can use a Web browser. (And Gmail is just one of the Google Web services I use regularly. I like the calendar, and the Picasa photo gallery, and the RSS reader particularly.)
I used to have a Hotmail account, back before Microsoft bought it a decade ago. It was a dazzling innovation: free, permanent e-mail. Then Microsoft bought it and I had a choice: I could have free, or I could have permanent. I quit using it.
Yesterday I signed up for Hotmail again. Going in, I was offered a chance to sign up for Windows Live instead. All I had to do was ". . . Click 'Install' to get this free software . . . ."
Whoa. Install software? No thank you very much. Why should I have to do that to use things that should be Web-based services, like a calendar and photo gallery? (And install a toolbar? Read my lips: Nononononono. In my opinion toolbars aren't merely visual junk, they're spyware. All of them. I don't care where they come from.)
I elected to just sign up for a free Hotmail account. What I discovered was that Gmail does for free things I could get from Hotmail only if I took a paid subscription – like collecting mail from POP3 accounts.
There are other annoyances. For instance, when I want my email and sign into Gmail I see my inbox. When I sign into Hotmail I see a landing page filled with the latest news from celebrity rehab and ads for things I have tried most of my adult life to avoid.
The point here is that Google provides the maximum service to its users with the minimum of intrusive monetization of the relationship. Microsoft provides the minimum of service with the maximum of intrusive monetization. Which one would any rational person choose?
Closely related point: Yahoo! is in the same mode as Microsoft --- min service, max monetization. I get no free POP3 support and annoying landing pages from Yahoo! Mail, too. (At least I can set my new Hotmail account to skip the landing page sometimes – something I haven't figured out how to do in Yahoo! Mail.)
So, question: Which does Microsoft want more – does it just want to make the kind of big bucks online that Google is making, or does it really want to compete with Google?
The software giant's behavior to date, from screwing up Hotmail to buying up Yahoo!, indicates that it doesn't understand that it cannot do the former (make the kind of big money Google makes on the Internet) without doing the latter (providing services of real value to users). It can't charge for admission when the free show down the block is better. It can't win from the top down, by buying existing customers. It can only win from the bottom up, by innovating new services that win new customers. And it could start by making Hotmail – all of Hotmail – competitive with Google by making it free.
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