“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

--Bill Gates

Summary: Microsoft starts milking businesses to which it gave early 'benefits'

WE have been writing a great deal about how Microsoft exploits the education systems in order to get children "addicted" to the company's products (recent examples in [1, 2, 3), but rarely do we write about how Microsoft applies to the same tactics to commerce. Here is a new example of low entry barrier in businesses. This leaves Microsoft capable of 'milking' those businesses, whose digital assets are kept captive.

Microsoft’s Office Live Small Business (OLSB) site advertises itself as offering free Website, domain-name and web-hosting services for small businesses. But at least one of these services — domain-name renewals — is on its way to becoming paid, starting October 1.

This is very typical, and those who fall victim to BizSpark should be made aware of what it really is. We wrote about the subject in:

• Poor Microsoft Gives Poor Software to Youngsters, Hoping to Remain Relevant
• Microsoft's Anti-Linux Dumping Crusade: Chapter 11.1
• Microsoft Tries to Fight Libre with Gratis
• An Open, Gentler Microsoft: The Best Illusion Only Novell Can Buy
• Microsoft's Last Breath: BAD (Bribing, Addicting, Dumping)
• Microsoft's B.A.D. (Bribing, Addicting, Dumping) Comes to the Philippines
• Down with Microsoft... in India (Updated)
• Microsoft Takes Dumping Tactics up a Notch
• The EDGIfication of the Philippines
• Microsoft Tries to Associate Itself with Open Source in Order to Spread Lock-in, Dump Proprietary Software on Clients

Vista 7 is another example of a hostage situation, as Microsoft plays all sorts of games with upgrades and editions. At Groklaw, Pamela Jones wrote: "Walt Mossberg has some unintentionally hilarious videos on the anguish of upgrading to Windows 7 and all the choices you face. I forgot what Windows is like. Love the table of choices. If you haven't used Windows in a while, this will make you smile. I am asking myself, why do people put themselves through this?"

The cost of Windows is mostly hidden. Sadly, this is designed such that people do not notice this, so they keep making the same mistake over and over again. Here is another news story about a firm that ditched Novell.

Palm Beach County, Fla., a midsized organization, chose licensed on-premise archiving software. The organization moved to Microsoft Exchange in 2007 and planned to implement an email archiving product at the same time. Previously, it had been using Novell Inc.'s Groupwise for email, but its archiving capabilities were limited and required considerable manual effort, reported Santhosh Samuel, server manager for the Palm Beach County's Information Support Services office.

On the positive side, this further weakens Novell, which has been lending credibility to Microsoft's accusations against GNU/Linux. ⬆