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Microsoft to Sell Outlook Subscription Service
An anonymous contributor writes "Boston.com is reporting that Microsoft will begin selling Outlook as a subscription service to compete with add-on services provided by Yahoo and Google. 'The new service, which costs $59.95 per year, will let people organize e-mail, contact lists and calendars in their online Hotmail accounts using the Microsoft Outlook program most often found on businesses' desktop computers.' I can't see many users paying for this service. Most Hotmail users use it because it is free, or they don't know about the alternatives. Paying for access via Outlook doesn't seem to fit with that market segment."
TFA Article Says:
Microsoft is smart to take advantage of a popular core product -- Outlook -- to help make Hotmail more attractive to sophisticated users.
They're not targeting fungrl149@hotmail.com here. They're targeting the exact segment of the market that Gmail appeals to now. Gmail took free web mail and turned it into a legitimate and attractive service. MS would now like to up the ante a bit and charge a little (and the dude said the price was 'steep', so it'll probably come down before launch) and provide more feature richness for that money. It's just another step towards the increasing legitimacy and acceptance of online services either replacing or merging with traditional desktop applications. I'm no fan of MS, but their participation in the advancement of web based email services or other apps is part and parcel of the general move forward.
I Want To Believe
In related news, FlyByNight Inc has announced that it will begin offering Outlook Express in a new reverse-subscription method. "We'll give users $59.95 per year to use this email program without antivirus software. Just install it, and we'll put your check in the mail right away," FlyByNight's Vice President of Public Relations, I. 0wnzJ00 explained.
Steve Ballmer initially acknowledged FlyByNight's efforts, stating, "We haven't been able to give it away - we bundled it with Windows, and people go out of their way to uninstall Outlook Express. We applaud FlyByNight's new distribution methods."
What's your damage, Heather?
People see surfrdood344@hotmail.com on my resume and say, "this guy means business"...
being able to have easier access to my hotmail account? priceless...
When I first read this article I saw this as a really stupid decision by Microsoft. It didn't seem to make any business sense at all. Then I saw it for what it really is. It's phase one in Microsoft's overall strategy to turn Office into a subscription service.
Little by little, piece by piece, you'll see various Office applications offered as a service, with the ultimate goal of making users pay the Microsoft tax once a year.
Gates isn't an idiot. He's seeing the ever increasing upgrade cycle. Let's face the facts, Office 2003 offers very few new useful features to your typical Office user than was there in Office 2000. Some would argue that all the way back to Office 98. He would love to get users into a subscription model. If you don't pay the yearly tax, your cut off, just like that.
Do businesses really rely on free web based email for communication? I've never worked for an IT company that had less than 100 employees so maybe I'm missing something here. Would small businesses really use communication systems that are outside their control (or through a pay service that provides corporate like email solutions) or ones that really don't have an obligation to protect their sensitive business data? I don't think I'd rely on Hotmail, Yahoo, etc... for anything beyond personal email. Just seems like too much of a risk.
No it's not, the replacement of static folders with more flexible labels does not change the basic model of email. There's no doubting it's a cool feature, but it's very much evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
The only paradigm that's been shifted by GMail is that marketeers now have direct access to their potential customers' emails and so have an unprecedented window in to the mind of their market.
With Microsoft Exchange becoming less favored in many corporate datacenters, and the threat of open source PIMs coming to Windows, like Evolution or Chandler, this change has the appearance of Microsoft making an effort to convince people to use servers they control to store PIM data and messages.
This gives Microsoft an excellent lock-in strategy, further down the road -- not only would you have to change email addresses to change clients, you would have to rebuild your contact database, transfer your calendar items, etc.
The only part that I find surprising, here, is that Microsoft would bother charging for the service. Why not make it free, then turn it to a pay service when they have properly locked up your data in their servers?
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Gmail Invites? Surely, you can't be serious. Next thing you know, somebody will offer us Free iPods!
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