Is Microsoft Eroding the Windows Market, In Order to Take Over Soon?

Before you dismiss this as the rantings of a fool, think about what has happened, and what is happening right now. I suppose I should have included the word external before the words windows market, as that is truly how it was meant.  (that would have led to too long a title)

Microsoft has released Live Essentials, which includes in the package, a full featured e-mail program, among a few other free offerings. The program works fairly well, with only a few glitches, and for most people using Windows, does all that is needed. For those corporate users, who need the more full featured scheduling, archiving capability, and fine grain control over mail, there is Outlook 2007.

What is my point you might say. First, other than Thunderbird, what free or paid e-mail software can you name that is used by more than 100 people? (and by the way, when was the last attempt at an update to Thunderbird?) Eudora has been closed, and although there are some users who will cling to their beloved program, most are leaving it behind for Live Mail, or, in very, very small numbers the abortive attempt from Mozilla called Penelope. Penelope was to have been the free, open source logical extension of Eudora, and as such, should have properly disposed of Live Mail. But since the effort was not up to the level of what could be called half-hearted, Live Mail took off.  Other mail programs are all but gone in the mists of time, and the best totally free program, Pegasus, has become something no longer used by more than a handful of users, with many who try it asking strangely what Novell is. This was because of a shrinking user base, and lack of add dollars (yes, free products sometimes need a shove to at least get noticed – Microsoft has lots of this ‘notice this’ money)

Also, the number of people using web based mailers has tended to kill off much of the progress on dedicated mailer programs. Who has lead the charge on that front? Well, you might say it is Google, or possibly Yahoo, now the largest players by volume, but as far as I am concerned, it was Hotmail that made this a palatable proposition.  Hotmail led the way. We know who owns Hotmail.

Now, after an unsuccessful attempt at something called Windows Live One Care, and the later acknowledgement that it was not a product ready for wide usage, we are notified yesterday, that the free replacement, code named Morro, specifically an antivirus program, is almost ready for release.

I wonder what shock was felt in the halls of McAfee, Symantec, and Kaspersky Labs. These entities make most of their revenue by offering antivirus solutions, either in standalone form, or as part of a comprehensive antimalware package. Now this upcoming release will not be the death knell to these providers, just as the program Windows Defender, purchased and repackaged from Giant Software, has not killed off many antispyware solutions. However, the number of antispyware solutions has become fewer, and the ones actually getting paid for by customers directly is a shrinking market, shrinking more all the time. Not to specifically beat that dead horse, but, in a bad economy, people tend to think a third time about purchasing a solution to something where there is an (ostensibly) acceptable solution to the problem.

In both of these cases, Microsoft gives away the freebie, providing a service for many, while taking a huge swipe at the other players in the field. Does the name Netscape ring any bells? I use Netscape because most everyone will acknowledge that Netscape was a superior product, and that many ‘new’ features in the development of Internet Exploder® were lifted directly from Netscape. Similar to the VHS versus Beta struggle, the superior product did not prevail.

While we can hope for a  Firefox , or an Opera,  to emerge in these fields being eroded by Microsoft’s free offerings, we can’t absolutely count upon it. It is not a given.

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Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.-  Aldous Huxley

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