Microsoft Unveils Online Services In Bid to Answer Google, Yahoo

[mandy]

In a strategy shift to deal with a new era of competition from Internet rivals like Google and Yahoo, Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled two new sets of online services for individuals and small businesses.

Windows Live (www.live .com) will allow people to create sophisticated personal Web pages with links to favorite news sites, music and e-mail...

Microsoft Office Live will offer free services for small businesses, such as e-mail, digital storage, a domain name and a way to quickly create Web pages. It is not designed to replace the company's profitable Microsoft Office software installed on computer desktops.

full article: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/silicon...059042.htm

[Kristijntje]

vnunet.com analysis: Microsoft 'Live' is a small bet with potentially large gains

'Live' applications set out to hit Google where it hurts

full article: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/214541...-microsoft

[mandy]

Another article on Microsoft's Windows Live

A skirmish with Google may seem similar to battles Microsoft fought against the likes of Netscape or Novell, but it's not the same at all. Google is also a very different company than Netscape was; there are far more business users and consumers using Google than ever used Netscape, and most of them see no need to switch to anything else.

...This move also repositions MSN as a content portal and allows the MSN technologies to tie directly into the Windows brand, which may give them more allure for both business and consumer end users.

...Live is a critical strategy to leverage the traditional power of the desktop operating system and applications model and extend it to the next generation of Web technologies.

full article: http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=39856

[mandy]

After running the .Net moniker into the ground, Microsoft backtracked and undid its branding mistakes. Will history soon repeat itself?

The warning signs are mounting fast and furiously. Microsoft's "Live" branding campaign is in danger of succumbing to the same fate as its .Net one.

When Microsoft first coined .Net, the term referred to something quite specific: The .Net Framework, a set of classes and libraries for building Windows applications.

But within a matter of months, Microsoft marketers began attaching the .Net moniker to all kinds of products, from Windows .Net Servers, to MapPoint.Net. .Net became a meaningless term that even Redmond's own couldn't explain concisely...

full article: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/...006,00.asp