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Hot gossip from Ned Brainard's poison pen. Microsoft was definitely up to something last week, but the media seems to have missed it.
Our old friend Dave Winer has often detailed the unique talent that denizens of the Redmond Redoubt have for spreading what Dave calls "FUD" - fear, uncertainty, and doubt. A week ago Friday, Steve Ballmer told a roomful of industry types gathered in Boston that Microsoft would sink more than US$400 million into Microsoft Network, MSNBC, and Expedia.
"MSN: It's a loss," Ballmer blared, "Expedia: a loss. MSNBC: a loss." And Microsoft expected to face three more years of similarly staggering shortfalls. "We're going to lose a lot of money before we break even," Ballmer cried, with what we can only assume were crocodile tears. Clearly, Ballmer's spreading something, and at least part of it smells like FUD.
As longtime observers of Microsoft, we've noticed that the company's FUD meter generally flies off the scale when the company itself is experiencing fear, uncertainty, and doubt about its own ability to meet its goals. We can only guess that something's very wrong right now in the Microsoft Internet universe.
It's obvious that Ballmer, in his appointed role as Microsoft attack dog, is trying to scare as many potential competitors out of the Internet space as possible, with his apocalyptic projections of a billion-dollar loss.
"If only companies with the financial power of Microsoft can make it in the content business, then we're years away from a viable Internet economy," Forrester Research president George Colony told The Wall Street Journal.
Snap out of it, George! While Steve was playing Net Chicken Little in front of you, ZDNet was reporting that Microsoft will delay the launch of Internet Explorer 4.0, rolling it into the development of IE 5.0. Which means Microsoft's Active Desktop - the project that's supposed to be the cornerstone of its Internet strategy - is very, very troubled. No wonder Steve's FUDding like mad.
The week also brought the end of yet another Internet online service. One week after America Online tossed its GNN service into the dumpster, CompuServe announced it was doing the same with WOW!, the "family-oriented" service that was supposed to smack America Online right in the kisser.
The WOW shutdown accompanied news of yet another quarterly loss for CompuServe, whose shares are languishing close to single-digit range after shooting into the 30s during the spring Internet craze. We can only imagine what the suits at H&R Block, which owns 80 percent of CompuServe, are thinking now about their lost opportunity. "Why, oh why," they should be saying to themselves, "did we wait so long to spin this sucker out?"
