The Answer Is 'No'
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News Commentary. The Jeopardy question was: "Can Microsoft Afford Live Mesh Success?" |
My colleague Jason Brooks observes that "Microsoft's financial health, which is wrapped up almost entirely [in] sales of fat clients running the latest Windows operating system with the latest version of Microsoft Office, is completely at odds with the mesh model."
He chooses an interesting example to make his point. Microsoft made two major announcements last week: the "birth" of Live Mesh and the "obituary" for MSN Music. Both services share something in common: Windows—and also Office for Live Mesh. The services' fates are tied to the fat clients.
MSN Music was part of Microsoft's broader digital entertainment strategy, supported by digital rights management and tied to Windows. MSN Music existed for the purpose of supporting sales of the fat client. But Microsoft's digital entertainment strategy slammed into a mountain called iPod and iTunes.
So, MSN Music, the supporting PlaysForSure DRM, and Microsoft customers and partners became casualties to the new strategy—Zune and the Zune Marketplace. Last week, Microsoft showed MSN Music some twisted love by categorically vowing to abandon all that DRM-protected music come the end of August. These customers trusted Microsoft and the MSN brand; many must have reasonably assumed that a music service launched by mighty Microsoft would last forever—or at least longer than any puny startup. But Windows mattered more, putting the priorities of the fat client in contradiction to those of the thin service.
Live Mesh is the next new "thin" thing. The service is invite-beta-only right now, but a public beta is expected around Microsoft's October developer conference. Microsoft makes promises about protecting and synchronizing people's data, of becoming the conduit for their online relationships. "How much?" is a question to be answered by the public beta.
There is a problem, which Jason rightly identifies. Should Mesh succeed, Office and Windows revenues could be at risk. Mesh may have ties to the fat clients, but so much of what it does will be in the server cloud. Many planned features would compete with Office and Windows, subsuming their usage roles and revenues.
So the question is: Will Live Mesh be "truly decoupled from Windows and Office," as Jason wonders, or will it be closely aligned with the fat clients? Right now, it looks to me like Microsoft is trying to have it both ways. Live Mesh can't serve two masters. If it's independent and competes with Office and Windows, major Microsoft executives will someday replace the "Live" in Mesh with "R.I.P." If Mesh isn't so independent, but fails to boost Office and Windows sales, its obituary will be written like MSN's.
I believe that Live Mesh will be more beholden to the cash cows than its own revenue future, even if Ray tries to give it greater independence. Mesh will be yet another mechanism by which Microsoft seeks to sell more copies of Office and Windows.
The question everybody should ask about Live Mesh: Can you trust Microsoft not to kill it? I remember my early briefings with Microsoft product managers about MSN Music. They were confident that the service would be around for a very long time. Three years—the amount of time the store operated—is about the lifespan of a hamster. It's not a long time, unless you're a hamster, of course.
How strangely coincidental that Microsoft sent to customers the MSN Music death letter the morning (April 22) before announcing Live Mesh (overnight on April 23). Later that day, Microsoft also announced Smart Watches' end of product life. Smart Watches made for a second obituary within 24 hours.
"Frakked" is the pejorative description for MSN Music customers that own content purchased from the defunct store. Microsoft did absolutely nothing for these music buyers. Last week over at Apple Watch I advised:
"Microsoft could have issued credits for Zune Marketplace to existing MSN Music customers: Reward loyalty by replacing their libraries. I don't think there were that many MSN Music customers. What's a few hundred thousand dollars or couple million bucks to Microsoft? Goodwill money is marketing dollars at work. Microsoft could also have benefited from turning some of those customers to Zune Marketplace."
Yesterday the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) issued an "open letter" (PDF) to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, demanding that his company "do the right thing" by customers. The EFF demanded that MSN Music customers receive an apology and refunds to purchase DRM-free tracks.
So I again ask, can you trust Microsoft's commitment to Live Mesh? I wouldn't.
Comments (7)
I love the idea of live mesh personally and hope to see it succeed, however some points I would make:
1. This is Microsoft's product- to use it you'll need an account for their services... that's more live accounts
2. By changing paradigms for how we use the internet this could be one of the few revolutions to seriously effect the use of browsers- meaning more homepages become mesh.com rather than google.com and more searches in turn go to MS- something very important to them.
3. If they link windows machines to Live IDs then eventually we may see the advent of Office licenses being tied to the services MS offers, it's Windows, Mobile and Mac afterall, so if you're using Mesh and want to open the document in the mesh browser you'll want Office for the convenience of a use anywhere in broswer Office 13- free with the purchase of a full version of office and running with silverlight in the browser window.
4. If you want to use a document with a competitor they'll need live mesh to make it easy- meaning MS either gets more support or more users of their own solutions.
This is all hypothetical and using my old tattered paranoid Linux user hat, but if you look at it Live Mesh really could be something to keep Windows relevant, at least office but also boost the company's presence with silverlight, search and dominance over google in some small way.
Posted by JRAE | April 30, 2008 4:22 PM
Excellent observation, Joe. On more and more fronts, customers are finding they can't trust MS to follow through.
Posted by George | April 30, 2008 4:22 PM
Not so.
If you read the details about Mesh in more detail you will see that Mesh is all about enabling devices and clients to sit alongside cloud storage. It enables the *partially* connected world - not a cloud only world.
In fact, technically speaking, it would be possible to break down an office document into atomic parts that can be synchronized separately. It doesn't take much of a leap to think how the next version of Office would work with the Mesh. Office could respond to document updates as they are made somewhere else on your mesh ring. This would enable collaborative editing of cloud based documents in real-time in Office.
On top of that devices would have their own version of Office, stripped down and fully ready to edit the same documents.
The cloud is just a peer alongside other local storage devices. It's also a typed data store - like WinFS was going to be. This fully enables fat clients and it keeps the PC/Windows partnership in place as the best place to edit and use applications.
Posted by Joeyw | April 30, 2008 5:02 PM
It seems to me that Live Mesh is Microsoft's second try at hijacking the Web since it appears that it is centred on Microsoft products.
I remember back in the second half of the nineties when Microsoft started treading all over Netscape by putting Internet Explorer in Win95 and then produced that thing called Frontpage that had its own HTML standard that was different from that which already existed. Netscape and later Firefox were unable to properly display many sites because they were created using Microsoft's software that dominated the Web at the time. It still happens today but far less frequently than it did then.
Quote from "Live Mesh: Windows Becomes the Web"
"Microsoft is launching a synchronization platform that the company claims is technology-agnostic. That absolutely is not true. Live Mesh is Microsoft's attempt to turn operating system and proprietary services platforms into hubs that replace the Web. It's the most anti-Web 2.0 technology yet released by any company. Microsoft is building a services-based operating system that transcends and extends Windows and also the function of Web browsers. It's bold, brilliant and downright scary."
Posted by Bernie | April 30, 2008 5:16 PM
I'm sorry, but I can't get excited about yet another boring synchronization application. It's been done before and nobody cared then and nobody will care now. What an incredible waste of resources.
Besides, as you point out, even if Live Mesh somehow succeeds why would anyone risk storing their life in a virtual file cabinet controlled by Microsoft and stored who knows where.
Posted by Joseph T Hatfield | May 2, 2008 8:08 AM
Yep, storing personal word documents on a shared server doesn't really excite me so much. Somewhere down the road you just kind of know deep down you will search for your own name and find all your personal stuff is indexed and live to the world. I also agree about it all being wasteful, why spend bandwidth and online storage space to use an otherwise desktop office application... I am not saying a lot of the sheeple out there won't go for it though.
Posted by Soap | May 3, 2008 1:54 AM
Quote; "My colleague Jason Brooks observes that "Microsoft's financial health, which is wrapped up almost entirely [in] sales of fat clients running the latest Windows operating system with the latest version of Microsoft Office"
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Forget Mesh, even without Mesh,MS is a one trick pony. Without the Windows OS installed on computers, MS will fade away. It lives by desktop market share. MS Office will also lose its way once Windows loses market share. The lock in well lose it luster.
MS is starting to lose that market share, thanks to the train wreck that is Vi$ta. Consumers will only gain from real competition.
Posted by chips | May 3, 2008 4:04 PM