MICROSOFT AND GOOGLE are fighting over people's data, including their communication (data going down the wires, not just data stored locally or in Fog Computing). Microsoft advocates the use of Windows, whereas Google advocates GNU/Linux with more Free software components inside the stack, e.g. Apache and Python. Neither company is "good" or "evil"; like in many wars, both sides can be "evil", but it's all very subjective. To us, what matters is that neither company promotes software freedom, but Google is a lot closer in the sense that some of its products and its funding go towards enabling software freedom (e.g. Summer of Code, Chromium, and maybe Wave to a certain extent).
“[H]ere is part of what Microsoft's Michael Hilliard, Corporate Counsel for Microsoft in Canada, said in the government's Copyright Consultations round table discussion...”
--Pamela Jones, GroklawTo put things in context, we've looked at recent news and gathered information which shows that in the US market (and meters that are not sponsored by Microsoft) Google continues to gain market share (not by excluding but by offering a better service).
Henry Blodget has argued that "Yahoo And AOL Should Immediately Merge" and it's not going to happen (more and more people seem to agree). Yahoo! is already somewhat of a property of Microsoft (the search part at the very least). MediaPost Communications looks at this alliance in the article "Navigating The Microsoft And Yahoo Alliance". For those who do not remember, Yahoo! was very close to signing a deal with Google, but Microsoft is then said to have hired AstroTurfers including LawMedia Group to shoot down the deal. It was utterly disgusting but very typical for Microsoft. Later on Microsoft took over Yahoo!
Anyway, there is more than just search at stake. Search is just a gateway through which a company can gain a lot of Web surfers and channel them towards particular pages, including their own proprietary services (Fog Computing and such). The Microsoft-friendly 1105 Media is promoting Fog Computing for children right now, including the Live@edu scam (there is a new press release about it and additional complaints about lack of encryption in it). The education systems are still being exploited by Microsoft in order to offer 'free' indoctrination that's akin to American EDGI [1, 2, 3, 4], which is now extending into Washington [1, 2, 3] and gets promoted by Seattle's Microsoft boosters [1, 2]. Had they been honest, they would state that it's not free and Microsoft should pay people for the privilege of having them brainwashed at the expense of their own time. Since Governor Gregoire is well within Microsoft's pocket [1, 2], nothing will be done to stop this. If anything, she is likely to encourage this abuse which is marketed using sheer spin.
Over at Minnesota there is already a surrender to Microsoft's Fog Computing, which is maddeningly irresponsible as it puts state E-mails under Microsoft's control and it's ripe to misuse [1, 2]. It's bad enough that some universities make this terrible mistake and under some new banner called "Microsoft Innovation Alliance" (we never came across it before) Microsoft is taking over many more colleges right now. To quote one example: "Software major Microsoft has enrolled BV Raju Institute of Technology (BVRIT) as its member under the Microsoft Innovation Alliance programme."
That'll be regrettable.
Based on what we learned in IRC last night, MTS (Canadian ISP) is also throwing its communications at Microsoft's servers. To quote:
Well, I guess there's no worry of getting heck for mentioning this since MTS has a press release about it on their website (August 7th)
MTS is phasing out their in-house email service, and switching to Microsoft Windows Live.
http://www.mts.ca/portal/site/mts/me...001342a8c0RCRD
"New customers will be able to take advantage of this new service starting August 17, and existing customers will be contacted by email with directions on transitioning to Windows Live services starting in October. Once the customer completes the transition, their existing emails and content in the customer's current MTS Webmail online account will be transferred to their new Windows Live account all within a few minutes."
Microsoft acknowledged BPOS service outages affecting customers in North America on Aug. 23, Sept. 3 and Sept. 7.
WEBMAIL PROVIDER Microsoft is looking into a bug that is apparently affecting thousands of its Hotmail users.
We were first alerted to the problem by a reader, as, er, none of us use Hotmail. Ian, in South Africa has been unable to get into his account all week and, quite fairly, thought that there might have been a correlation between the Hotmail security updates we had reported and his being unable to access the service.