You are here Microsoft's discrimination business model? Do as they say not as they do.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2006-11-16 18:43
The Wall Street Journal front page story on: "How Microsoft is learning to love online advertising" is a perfect example of Microsoft's hypocrisy and double standard on net neutrality.
The article highlights how after a slow start Microsoft is rushing into online advertising to catch up with Google. Two quotes from the article sum it up well:
So?
Microsoft supports net neutrality regulation of all broadband companies regardless of market share when they are convicted monopolists with 90+% share of the operating system and browser markets.
-
They think it's perfectly OK for them to leverage their dominant market share to create a two-sided market (end user sales supplemented with advertising) but they want to make it illegal for broadband companies to pursue a similar two-sided model.
-
In other words, when Microsoft leverages their products and web services with advertising -- it's perfectly fine, but if any broadband company does the same normal business practice, they are "discriminating" illegally.
To add to the hypocrisy of the day, there is another Microsoft story from AP in today's WSJ: "Microsoft will join in free WiFi Effort". The article says that Microsoft, in conjunction with MetroFi, will build a free WiFi service for Portland Oregon, that will be supported by advertising. Advertising-supported broadband is precisely one of the supposed scourges that net neutrality regulation is trying to prevent.
»
|