Robert Denton

Windows Not-Live Shopping

Windows Live Shopping

Tell me how, really, how can anyone launch something in such a way? How can a web site or web service be written today no less by the world’s largest software company and not support any browser on many platforms? What is the excuse, really for Microsoft’s Shopping Live web site?

I have several annoyances like this. I’ve seen it with Google, Yahoo, other web music shopping sites, and the long time killer has always been video formats and containers. The disease runs all the way to a device I use daily, the iPod. Well actually the disease there is not with the hardware that is the iPod but with the software DRM that is embedded in digital music files one purchases from iTunes (and I buy very few because of this…). See, the DRM files from iTunes play only in iTunes or from an iPod. As DRM goes it’s probably the least draconian but long term DRM fails. I can still go into a library and view content from a thousand years ago. Do you think anything I buy from iTunes or view in any of these close video formats will be usable in 25 years? Not unless I put a lot of work into converting, illegally if the industries have anything to say about it, my purchased content into new formats.

The same thinking is likely behind MSFT’s decision to launch a huge category killer (not) web service shopping comparison site. They likely developed it with their own tools for their own platform. Maybe because they were locked into their own ocean or maybe because it was the most cost effective, or maybe even because it is truly the best way in the world to dream up and execute a shopping comparison site.

The trouble here is the monolithic thinking behind IP and platforms. If IP is held close enough so you can control the entire platform forever and ever, amen that is successful for only so long. At some point cracks begin to appear and openness comes knocking. Not to mention the mere fact that information wants to be free, and, accessibility in a more universal manner is the best way for not only products to survive but for the world.

This may sound hyperbolic I should provide some more supporting evidence but that’s what this space is for… 🙂