Microsoft Threatens Startups Over Account Info

HangingChad writes "According to Fortune, there are reports that Microsoft is trying to strong arm startups to give preferential treatment to MSN Messenger and are using account information as leverage. 'If the company wants to offer other IM services (from Yahoo, Google or AOL, say), Messenger must get top billing. And if the startup wants to offer any other IM service, it must pay Microsoft 25 cents a user per year for a site license.' Of course, if the company is willing to use Messenger exclusively 'fee will be discounted 100 percent.' Getting detailed information is difficult as many of the companies being approached are afraid of reprisals."

Comments

Re:They are all playing the lock in game

[Enlightenment]

I think this quote says quite a lot: "We want to make sure our data is kept between our users and our servers." "Our data"? Is that even a legal position to take? It's sure as hell not intuitively obvious that they should be able to consider data theirs just because they're the ones who keep track of it.

Re:They are all playing the lock in game

[Divebus]

Same old head crushers. Are you watching this DOJ? Oh, it's not a threat... it's a choice. An anti-competitive, locked in, service bundling, vendor threatening choice - in the name of beter "security". Puleeeez. We've seen this behavior before and I hope this blows up in their face worse than last time.

Re:Heavy Foot

[MightyYar]

What they are doing is trying to find ways of monetizing their services. All well and good if they weren't shipping the product free with their monopoly OS. They have to play by different rules than everyone else, because no one else has a monopoly to leverage.

What about Intellectual Property?

[mangu]

"Our data"? Is that even a legal position to take? It's sure as hell not intuitively obvious that they should be able to consider data theirs just because they're the ones who keep track of it.

An interesting position, if we the people would be allowed to claim it. Since I'm the keeper of the information in my computer, does it mean I own the intellectual property?!...

Yes, I know, there's a difference between "data" an "information". But my list of contacts isn't something that arose spontaneously, we aren't talking about phone books here. I worked for years to meet all the people in my list. That's information that has been carefully collected and organized, it's not like taking a list of everybody who lives in a city and ordering by last name.

That list of contacts is *MY* data, *MY* property and *I* should have the final word about it!

Re:What about Intellectual Property?

[Frosty Piss]

That list of contacts is *MY* data, *MY* property and *I* should have the final word about it!

You would think so, wouldn't you? On the other hand, I wonder what the EULA / TOS that WIM users clicked right through without reading has to say about it.

Perhaps all your lists are belonging to them.

Parity Error

[NullProg]

We put the question to Brian Hall, general manager for Windows Live. "We want the user to be in control of their stuff," he told me. "We believe strongly that it's the user's data, it's the user's choice."

Oh really? What about Secure Audio Path and the other draconian DRM measures in Windows.

Microsoft must be running for public office. Say one thing, do another.

Enjoy,

Re:Not really...

[Zeinfeld]

It wasn't "social networking sites", but "webmail sites". And of the three big ones (Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google), only Microsoft try to use control of the mail contacts as a "leverage" for their other products.

Acording to TFA it was the social networking sites that were trying to hook in.

OK so you don't like Microsoft's tactics, don't get a Hotmail account. What I find rather more objectionable is the amount of social networking spam I have been getting from new social networking sites trying to gain critical mass.

In one week I received email from three new networks trying to start up, each one was playing the 'download all the contacts and spam them' game.

Flaming Microsoft is fun but after the first decade or so it got old. I gave that up in '98 or so. Rather more interesting is working out what we can do to change the game.

In the dotCrime Manifesto I proposed a mashup of OpenID/SAML/WS-* on the authentication side, FOAF as contact interchange medium, DNS SRV records as the discovery mechanism. The objective being to create an identity system in which end users own and control their own data.

Finding folk who are upset enough to flame Microsoft is rather easier than finding folk interested in writing or deploying code that might change the situation.

Easy solution

[Arcturax]

Make Microsoft look like assholes and make sure users know it's MS's fault.

On your social networking/Web 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, whatever site allow users to import from AIM, YIM and Google. However for MSN, grey out the option and next to it in red put "Due to legal pressure by Microsoft, if you use MSN, you must manually import your contacts" and give a link to a tedious page that restates this reason and make them upload them one at a time.

Naturally users are going to be rather upset at MS and wonder if maybe they should switch to AIM instead.

Re:They are all playing the lock in game

[ozmanjusri]

It's their data, we're their customers.

We're their product.

Marketing companies are their customers.