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Microsoft Gives Up on Hailstorm
Dephex Twin writes "According to a NYTimes article: due to lack of 3rd-party support for Microsoft's "Persona" (originally codenamed "Hailstorm"), the company has been forced to dump the project. It seems the companies didn't like having a middleman between them and the consumers. As a person worried about the future with .NET, this is a bit of a relief."
When people trot out that .Net is an evil system to make everyone turn into Microsoft slaves by turning over our personal records to them, it is a disgusting display of ignorance of what .Net really is.
.Net does not mean that Hailstorm == .Net.
It is a set of services, including web services, that is designed to compete with Java.
Just because Hailstorm was to be implemented as a service of
Please get a clue.
Microsoft was going to open up passport authentication to third-party ID servers via passport, right? Or am i just confused about that? Is that not happening anymore?
Is microsoft abandoning their drive to make Passport the authentication mechanism for *everything*, Starbucks and such, or are they just going to drop the pretense of making it an open system?
>It seems the companies didn't like having a middleman between them and the consumers
Gee, who'd have guessed. Microsoft, the company who's trying to incorporate every possible end-user application into their OS (thus killing the middleware, shareware, and even some commercial software industries) didn't see this coming? They couldn't imagine that other companies might have the same interests in mind? Aside from the obvious consumer objections, it should have been obvious to Microsoft from the get-go that other companies aren't going to trust them to keep track of userdata.
CBDTPA universally rejected and Hailstorm bites the dust. I have to say, today was a good day.
-s
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Maybe now they'll stop trying to cram Windows Messenger down everyone's throat (signing up gets you a Passport account). If you've used Windows XP you know what I'm talking about.
Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt [*cough*] it seems like they jumped the gun just a bit.
After all they are just now wrapping up the one month security review they started back at the beginning of february. yep, that is still going on.
So this is a case where vaporware was not being bought at all, working against them instead of working for them.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Hailstorm fails to put dent in market.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
http://arstechnica.com/paedia/n/net/net-1.html
.NET actual is and is not. The article gives a nice broad technical overview.
For those that are interested in learning what
Couldn't get it to run on Apache over BSD.
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
If MS truly sees the market as being essential to their revenues, they'll just keep going until they borg out the other players. In fact, this is in line with their history of rejected/crappy first releases/attempts.
This isn't exactly the first time Microsoft has chosen to scrap a project that has been so heavily advertised, but it's definitely one of the most prestigious ones they have cancelled.
.NET service that "authenticates users, provides the ability to send alerts, and stores personal information, including contacts, e-mail, calendar, profile, lists, electronic wallet, physical location, document stores, application settings, favorite Web sites, devices owned, and preferences for receiving alerts." (from Microsoft)
.NET is crucial to get penetration on the Big Market, i.e. mission critical business application software.
.NET's, showing off its capabilities. Now it's going to be interesting to see how the industry acceptance for .NET evolves.
Hailstorm/Persona was supposed to be a
I think the key problem for Microsoft is the following (from the article:) "They ran into the reality that many companies don't want any company between them and their customers,"
Bill and Steve are probably a bit surprised, not used to having people say No to them, especially not the big companies that they have started to court now that they have a consumer market monopoly.
Hailstorm/Persona was seen by many as a reference implementation of
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Microsoft has pretty consistently touted the networked XML web services part of the .NET framework as the 'best part'. Which I think is complete bullshit. The 'best part' about .NET is the fact that it is compiled, managed, sandboxed code with a truly awesome set of tools to play with. Improved data management, almost every object in it is serializable (you can save it to the HD in text or binary format, and reload it later, built in, no extra coding).
.NET... in fact, the only reason I know of NOT to like .NET is the usual 'Windows Only' bullshit. But it's a MS product... that's a given.
There are a lot of reasons to like
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Yeah I've had the same feeling for a while
.NET (or at least the plan for Hailstorm-integrated .NET apps) are just a couple of things that will mark the end of MS as we know it.
IMHO, subscription licensing and
There just seems to be a groundswell of (shock-horror!) FUD against MS. Mom & Pop Win98 user are happy running MS's desktop OS, but let them run banking security? No way!
Don't get me wrong - Bill will find a way (e.g. X-box/consumer eletronics) to still make piles of cash and dominate a market - but I know of more than a couple of hardened MS-heads that are seriously considering alternatives. These are the same guys that swear by Win2k, Active Directory etc..
At risk of being modded down, you've gotta give the guy (Bill) credit. He's always got alternatives - and if not the sheer size of his cashpile will enable him to buy into the Next Big Thing (remember their late internet entry?)
gadgetophile.com
The service, originally code-named Hailstorm and later renamed My Services, was to be the clearest example of the company's ambitious .Net strategy.
All glory to the hypno-toad!
Well, as a Mac user for over 10 years, I'd rather not have
(I submitted the article, BTW.)
Maybe that clarifies a bit...
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Their lack of credibility has finally caught up with them.
IMHO, Microsoft is incapable of leading any kind of initiative that requires third party support. That would require finding third parties that trust Microsoft -- a dubious proposition indeed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who do you think had the whole HailStorm idea? Marketing.
You can almost hear the conversation in the meeting
Marketing: "This will be great! People can log in from anywhere!"
Developers: "Yeah, that's technically possible."
Marketing: "Then Go! Go! Go!"
I imagine starting HailStorm and canceling HailStorm were topics of fiery debates inside the Fortress of Microsoft.
Finally a techno Exec probably said "This is stupid. Who is really going to sign up with us? Pay Microsoft to authenticate their users?"
One more thing....Figure out what
It's not that Microsoft's trajectory has necessarily passed its apex, it's that websites like slashdot focus more attention on pointing out Microsoft's missteps. Take ANY large company and put it under the microscope ... and you'll find the exact same thing.
I had used Linux and FreeBSD excusively for about two years - I even once posted a (rejected) Ask Slashdot question entitled "Why Windows," arguing that with the multimedia (mplayer) and browser (pick konq/galeon) support available in Linux, that no one needed Windows.
.NET delivers on all the promises that Sun had made of Java. (M$ has beaten them - intsead of "write once, run anywhere," .NET offers "compile once, run anywhere.")
.NET - M$ has actually embraced industry standards. ASP.NET can be accessed from any client provided you have an HTTP connection. That's the only requirement. I sitll support the paranoid people, because there is always the chance that M$ will extend and extinguish what it has embraced, but with them having submitted everything to ECMA, that's really an outside worry.
My viewpoint has changed radically. I have an XP box now - it's actually a pretty stable OS. And
I still use Linux/Apache/MySQL for all of my servers - and with SQL 2000 at $20,000 per processor that won't change anytime soon - but Windows has gotten more stable. Linus once said that he started Linux because he wanted software that didn't stink...win3.1, win95, and win98 all stink, but 2K and XP are actually pretty nice.
I will probably switch back over to an all OSS setup when Miguel et al finish Mono. That's gonna be sweet, too - imagine the day when you can compile an executable (not java bytecode) on a {Windows, Linux} box and then run that executable on a {Linux, Windows} box.
That's the nice thing about
So now that their competition has gone away, what happens to the Liberty Alliance? Will they stick together, or each go their separate ways creating their own separate identity database schemes?
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Microsoft understands that it needs to sell something that users are willing to pay $10 or $20 a month for. If an online calendar/address book/data storage/wallet (which is all that .Net My Services ever was) doesn't convince people to hand over the money, they'll find something that will.
.Net My Services may be scaled back, but Passport is becoming more and more visible: Monster and EBay both have it as an option, for example.
Revenue for desktop operating systems is leveling out, so they are looking for the next cash cow. Right now, they appear a little disorganized because they're trying several things at once: Web Services, MSN TV, Pocket PC, and X-Box, to name a few. In particular, they're moving aggressively to expand the MSN brand (by partnering with / buying up ISPs.)
At any rate, Hailstorm is far from gone:
You can hardly cast the X-Box as half-assed. While the investment hasn't rendered the return expected yet, even Hemos says " X-Box isn't dead yet - not by a long shot. ". I know that many readers concider Hemos a beta test of human cloning, but he speaks the truth this time.
.NET-that. I expect these developers will adopt the new versions of Microsoft because the company they work for doesn't want to deal with retraining thier development staff.
While microsoft can't turn out the growth that the company has stolen from it's costomers in the past, doesn't mean that they don't have plenty of cash on hand. In this case in paticular, they are listening to the public enough to realize that not only do we not like what they are doing, they can't force us to use it, and we will not if they don't.
I too look forward to the day when Microsoft is tamed into a shrew of a company that can't afford to die, but cant afford to do anything real in the market place. That being said, it's hard to put your hand on the pulse of Microsoft's marketing engine unless your the direct recipent of it's ploys. Trust me friend. For-Hire closed source developers like MS's spoon feeding them a soft diet of Visual-This and
You may think you see them tossing in the towel, but what you actually see are the threads of the towel falling into the ring as they are whipping the cornors back and forth across the backs of millions of developers
</soapbox>
Ack! Stop with the rotten fruit already!
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
Here's the article text:
.Net strategy. It was intended to permit an individual to keep an online persona independent of his or her desktop computer, supposedly safely stored as part of a vast data repository where there could be easy access to it from any point on the Internet.
.Net software to leverage its brand into a broad range of service businesses.
.Net consultant, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. Microsoft was unable to persuade either consumer companies or software developers that it had solved all of the privacy and security issues raised by the prospect of keeping personal information in a centralized repository, he said.
.Net operating system.
April 11, 2002
Microsoft Has Shelved Its Internet 'Persona' Service
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, April 10 -- Microsoft (news/quote ) has quietly shelved a consumer information service that was once planned as the centerpiece of the company's foray into the market for tightly linked Web services.
The service, originally code-named Hailstorm and later renamed My Services, was to be the clearest example of the company's ambitious
At the time of the introduction of My Services, Microsoft also proclaimed that it would have a set of prominent partners in areas like finance and travel for the My Services system. However, according to both industry consultants and Microsoft partners, after nine months of intense effort the company was unable to find any partner willing to commit itself to the program.
Industry executives said the caution displayed by consumer giants like American Express (news/quote) and Citigroup (news/quote ) illuminated a bitter tug of war being fought over consumer information by some of the largest financial and information companies.
"They ran into the reality that many companies don't want any company between them and their customers," said David Smith, vice president for Internet services at the Gartner Group (news/quote), a computer industry consulting and research firm.
The lack of interest also indicates that in a variety of industries outside the desktop computer business there remain significant concerns about Microsoft's potential to use its personal computer monopoly and its
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An early signal that the My Services idea was in trouble came last fall at Microsoft's annual developer's conference, attended by more than 6,000 programmers. The sessions on My Services were poorly attended, an attendee said.
"There was incredible customer resistance," said a Microsoft
Microsoft executives acknowledged the shift in strategy and said the company was still contemplating how it would bring out a revised version of the My Services technology. The decision resulted in a relocation of several dozen programmers in December from a consumer products development group run by Robert Muglia to the company's operating systems division.
"We're sort of in the Hegelian synthesis of figuring out where the products go once they've encountered the reality of the marketplace," said Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft's general manager for platform strategy.
He said part of the decision to back away from a consumer version of My Services was based on industry concerns about who was going to manage customer data. The issue, he asserted, was more of a sticking point within the industry, rather than among consumers.
"We heard a lot of concern about that point from competitors in the industry but very little from our users," he said.
Microsoft is now considering selling My Services to corporations in a traditional package form, rather than as a service. The companies would maintain the data for their own users.
"Frankly selling this stuff to people who build large data centers with our software is not a bad model," Mr. Fitzgerald said.
Microsoft first introduced the Hailstorm services idea at a news conference at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., in March 2001. At the time, the technology received endorsements from a handful of corporations including American Express, Expedia (news/quote), eBay (news/quote), Click Commerce (news/quote) and Groove Networks.
At the time of the announcement, Microsoft described Hailstorm as a way for a consumer to have a consistent set of services, like e-mail, contacts, a calendar and an electronic "wallet" -- whether sitting at a desk or traveling and using a wireless personal digital assistant.
"Microsoft's `Hailstorm' technologies open exciting new opportunities for us to use the Web in ways never thought of before, helping us to continue to deliver service that is truly unmatched in the industry," Glen Salow, the chief information officer of American Express, said at the time in a statement.
More recently, however, American Express officials have told computer industry executives that they remain concerned about being displaced by Microsoft's brand in such a partnership.
A company spokesman said in a telephone interview today that American Express had intended to endorse the broader notion of integrated Internet services last March, not My Services specifically. He said he did not know if the company had discussions with Microsoft about becoming a My Services repository.
Several industry consultants who work with Microsoft said that the company was now planning to deploy My Services as a software product for corporate computer users some time next year, after the company introduces its
"Enterprise customers were telling Microsoft, `We like this idea but we don't want to be part of this huge public database,' " said Matt Rosoff, an analyst who follows the company at Directions on Microsoft, a market research firm in Kirkland, Wash.
When it was introduced, the Hailstorm plan quickly became a lightning rod for privacy advocates who saw dangers in concentrating vast amounts of personal information in a single repository.
Last fall a coalition of privacy groups complained in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission about the potential risks inherent in Microsoft's collecting personal information from and about several hundred million personal computer users.
My Services also created thorny privacy issues for Microsoft in Europe, because of restrictions on transborder data transfers there. Microsoft has not resolved how personal information stored in one country can be easily transmitted internationally.
Consider: Hailstorm required the cooperation of other companies, who were reluctant for many good reasons to pay for the privilege of placing Microsoft between themselves and their customers. (Customers were also none too thrilled about the idea, either.) There are companies that might find Microsoft's desktop OS monopoly a sufficiently compelling reason to justify such a move, though - companies selling bits (media and software). Only Microsoft has the leverage over desktop users to foist user-hateful "digital rights management" technologies upon them. (I don't just mean technology to prevent copying of "protected" media, but also watermark detection/embedding, etc.)
Given a DRM system integrated sufficiently into the OS, some control over unauthorized data manipulation may be possible - at least, enough to deter most users. The legal billy-club of the DMCA (combined with Microsoft's practically infinite legal budget) is already in place to deter companies or individuals enabling circumvention, and patents are likewise in place to thwart competitors and open-source alternatives. When Microsoft's ubiquitous rollout of DRM is complete, they may be able to play to the paranoia of media companies desperately grasping for something, anything, to tame the very nature of the bit - to make it uncopyable. This again places Microsoft in the revenue stream (and customer data stream), but by offering something more compelling than mere data aggregation.
Their quiet backing of the SSSCA/CBDTPA is only the beginning, I think of this new push. Hailstorm was unappealing to companies and a magnet for criticism, but DRM leverages Microsoft's existing monopoly so I think they'll translate their goal of skimming off every transaction to this arena.
Just MHO,
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
People have been pointing out that Hailstorm/Persona was NOT the bulk of what .NET My Services is, that this isn't as bad a blow to Microsoft as some people are making it out to be. And they're right. Kind of. But I've seen this coming for years. I've known for so long that Microsoft only has so much steam left in it, and this is one of the first signs that it's slowing down.
.NET My Services is the same thing. It's another Microsoft attempt to become the middleman, so to speak; they want to be the one in charge of how everyone works together. Doesn't it seem obvious at this point that technology companies will, sooner or later, go the same path with .NET as online businesses did with Hailstorm?
.NET My Services, so they probably aren't going away in the immediate future. But the technology industry is unpredictable, and it can change incredibly fast sometimes. We may be seeing the first steps towards an era of Microsoft-free computing.
Hailstorm was Microsoft's attempt to become the middleman in a wide range of web transactions. It didn't work, and for a good reason--companies don't like middlemen, especially those as powerful as Microsoft.
When you think about it,
Granted, Microsoft has put a lot more marketing clout behind
IOW, a common code base with the typical MS attention to security, but maintained by thousands of clueless sysadmins rather than by a single company who at least might see fit to install updates. So instead of a single point of failure, you suddenly have hundreds. Fun!
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
In the time it took for you to post a response, you could have checked to see that I did, in fact, register as dephex/microsoft with bogus info. I suggested that as an example in my original post.
As for your second question, if this were adopted as a standard, it would save me from having to register every time I wanted to read a nytimes article on a system that they hadn't already implanted a cookie, which happens often enough that it's a pain in my ass, but not often enough for me to remember my arbitrary username/pass that I have set up legitimately. Since I use more than one computer, I do have to worry about it beyond the initial trouble.
And finally, if you don't like the system, don't adopt it.
--
$tar -xvf
Uh...not every MCSE out there.
I was, to be frank, worried about its implications for security. Having Microsoft guard the keys to my bank account is like having the fox guard the hen house.
Nice to see it go. Now .NET can stand or fall on its own merits, not on privacy concerns.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Um, because -- as with most news sources -- advertising is kept separate from editorial content?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
No, it's not just you. The problem seems to be that MS has tried to expand too quickly at quite an inopportune time. Their attempts at horizontal integration of the entire consumer electronics industry has backfired with the current antitrust issues going on.
.NET and passport ideas, and whether or not these too will fail or just become immensely unpopular. Regardless, the deathly grip they hold on the OS market has yet to see a legitimate adversary, so it will be a long time before we see the complete downfall of Microsoft.
.NET is their priority. They know they have an uphill battle ahead of them, and I know they'll fight it, because losing it will make life extremely difficult for Java.
And this certainly isn't the first time. We all remember when the Interent wasn't something MS was interested in. It wasn't big enough, if I remember Gates's sentiments. Instead, they were going to replace it with MSN, in one of MSN's many reincarnations. How many times did they reinvent MSN, each time diving into a new idea head on, only to find nothing there to grab on to? (Of course, this time, they're just buying out Qwest DSL, so it'll probably work just fine)
The half-assed attempt at a console, also known as the X-Box, is surely just an investment for the future home entertainment systems created by Microsoft, but at the rate they're going there will not be enough cash on hand to take the losses normally associated with selling console systems.
I'm not so sure about this. If there's one thing that we can be sure about, it's that MS is persistant to levels no other business can finance. They've launched programs and fallen on their face more times than most companies could ever hope to afford. Many would say that they've finally gotten Windows right, and it only took them 15 years.
I'm sure MS will get the X-Box right, even if it takes another 15 years, because when they do get it right, they'll have it all. Why bother with Windows on PC's when they can put everything; game console, DVD player, PC, all in one box that they get the revenues from?
It will be interesting to see how successful Microsoft will be with their current networking desires that follow their
.NET will happen, and it will succeed famously, at least in the Windows world. It's simply the next logical step for Windows development, even if we ignore the cross-platform and passport elements. The number of developers and businesses out there that declare anything made by MS to be divine gospel will see to that. Whether or not it's accepted by those that aren't followers of Redmond remains to be seen, I think, and I'm sure it won't come without a fight.
Sun knows fighting
if it really bothers you that much, just log in using uname:anonymous, pass:anonymous. hell, there are a ton of these that work...IIRC, slashdot/slashdot works, so should mefi/mefi (for metafilter). pick one, set a cookie, be done with it. NYT has has this login shit since '96 at least, but I'm not aware of they're having used it for anything.
or, bitch about it each time.
sorry, that was way offtopic
This is not an "inopportune" time; this is exactly the time when MS needs to expand into other businesses. (See my other post to this article.) Desktop OS revenues are flat; nobody seems in any hurry to upgrade Office versions; and MSN TV hasn't done very well. They need to find something to satisfy their legal responsibility to their shareholders (note that this primarily still means Bill & Steve & Jim.)
As for the XBox: you're absolutely right that it's an "investment for the future", but perhaps not in the way you meant. The XBox's real purpose is clearly visible if you dig a bit deeper into their discussions with ISVs (i.e. game developers). It's called XBox.NET, in other words, a $10 or $20/month online gaming subscription service. The XBox is clearly targeted to the 18-35 crowd, plus it's the only console that currently ships with an ethernet port built-in.
That's where MS plans to make its money: if it sells you one game (e.g. Halo) plus 6 months of XBOX.NET at say $20/month, they make back that $125 subsidy for the hardware, then even if they never sell you another game!
And don't expect them to run out of money any time soon. Right now, they anticipate losing about $2,000,000,000 before they start breaking even on the XBox, but they have about $37,000,000,000 in the bank. According to SteveB, even with 40,000 employees (up from 30,000 just 2 years ago), they have enough money in the bank to run the company another 5 YEARS without another dime of revenue...
Is microsoft abandoning their drive to make Passport the authentication mechanism for *everything*, Starbucks and such, or are they just going to drop the pretense of making it an open system?
.NET MyServices (aka Hailstorm). Passport is an authentication mechanism while .NET MyServices was supposed to be a centralized repository of user information (calendar, preferences, inbox, contacts, bookmarks, etc) which could be queried by various vendors who would receive restricted access to the data based on the user's settings.
.NET MyServices like an inbox, contacts, calendar etc.
.net workalike? Are they still going to?
Passport was a seperate initiative from
Is it possible for people to take the hailstorm protocol, if they so desire, and set up an independent, decentralized hailstorm network that just happens to not be affiliated at all with microsoft?
There are a couple of things to consider here. The first being whether there are any intellectual property(IP) issues, I have no idea about this but wouldn't advice anyone to start something like that without at first ensuring there aren't any patents or anything like that being violated. The second thing is exactly how one would use the technology. Personally when I first saw a Hailstorm presentation last summer I kept on thinking that it may face difficulty in gaining widespread acceptance for exactly the same reasons listed in the article; there was no justification for vendors to give up so much control to user information to a third party. One example touted was the ability to move music preferences from website to website but the question never asked is why Amazon.com [for example] would make it easier for users to grab all their painstakingly entered personal preferences and music ratings to CDNow.com or some other online site. I remember emailing the presenter about my thoughts but couldn't follow up since it happened close to the end of my internship. However, it may work within a closed environment like a corporate intranet but then again MSFT already has Exchange which has a lot of the important functionality that would be provided by
Was GNOME MONO planning on implementing hailstorm as part of their
Gnome is not related to Mono. Miguel De Icaza may have founded both but he no longer maintains any packages for Gnome nor does he do much (if any) active development but instead spends most of his energy on Mono.
As for your question, Mono is not interested in Passport or Hailstorm and went as far as creating a page about it because people kept on getting misconceptions about it.
Disclaimer:This post is my opinion and does not reflect the views, opinions, intentions or strategies of my employer.
I hate to break it to you, but you're a pretty piss poor example of MS's targeted consumers. For that matter, your a pretty poor example for about 99.5% of the population. Assuming $12/DVD, you've got over $6000 invested in movies alone. Assuming $500/PC, $50/DVD drive, and $150/DVD player, you're around $10,000 in electronics. Not many people drop $15,000 for anything short of a car or house.
Well, you obviously hang out in different circles than most of the rest of the world. Samba and Linux are still not easy enough to install for a beginner, and even basic networking knowledge is difficult to find. I don't think anyone is worried about Samba file servers taking over the home market anytime soon.
Microsoft knows how to do one thing, but they do that thing pretty well. They create the demand for their products, whether in the minds of PHBs or in the minds of consumers. Developers are an afterthought, because they will follow the market...they haven't much choice. I don't think Hailstorm being dropped is the omen of MS's downfall, simply another failed attempt...they have many. But, in the end, their successes far outweigh their failures.
What, you mean suddenly I don't have to compile my java code in order to run my programs?!? AWESOME!
Get your head out of your behind for a second and think about what you are saying. See that part above that says "run anywhere"? "Anywhere" does not equal just the Intel x86 processor. Also, not all OSes use the same object and linking formats for runnable binaries even if the OSes both run on the same hardware architecture. What is the end result to you, the .Net user? A virtual machine or just-in-time compiler for intermediate bytecode! Funny, that's exactly what many Java implementations do, isn't it?
There is, in fact, a whole separate specification for just the Java Machine itself. That means that, in theory, it would be possible to write a compiler that could take other programming languages as input and output Java Machine bytecode. Wow! Just like .Net! How about that?! Amazing.
Sure, .Net binaries might be able to store pre-compiled versions of those programs for certain targets but that is just a caching problem, and .Net isn't the first system to do something like this. It's not really even a very difficult problem to solve.
I submit that Microsoft is merely re-inventing the wheel with their .Net stuff because Sun wouldn't play ball and let them extend Java any which way they wanted to. Big fat hairy deal. It's just one more standard people will get to choose from. And, as Andrew Tannenbaum said, standards are great because there are so many to choose from!
Because Microsoft knows that they have no products they can sell anymore. That's the trouble with consumer productivity software; it gets finished. Windows was finished around NT/Win 98. Office was finished around Office 97. Etc. These products have all the features that the average consumer will ever need in a lifetime, and what Microsoft can improve, and has improved in them since that time, is worth about a dollar or two to the consumer. They are their own absolute nightmare competitor, because the last product did the job. And the one before that. So, why pay again?
The same holds true about free software. It takes its time, but eventually it gets there with this type of program. They get finished, good enough, and eventually there is just a few features added now and then.
MS needs to switch to a subscription base or they die. The only buisnesses that can survive in the post-software-got-finished world are the ones on a subscription model, alternatively those in markets like games, buisness systems integration, services, etc, where the products dont ever get finished.
Microsoft has a rock solid grip on a dead market, partly killed by them, partly killed by the product structure, and they know it. That's why they need to change and make money in other markets.
Of course, nobody wants them in any other market so they're met with a blank wall of resistance from all sides. Maybe the other industries will manage to keep them in their glass box until their 'air supply' runs out.
Sorry, but they did not invent XML or SOAP. Typical embrace and extend scenario.
XML comes from SGML which existed before MicroSoft.
SOAP is a bloated enhancement of XML-RPC.
Amazing how many things MS is credited with 'inventing'.