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.

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: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.