“The company will open a multimillion-dollar advertising
campaign tomorrow to highlight the Windows 2000 operating system
and related software used to build e-commerce sites, Microsoft
representatives say. A new unit will serve as a single point of
contact for Internet-based customers.”
“The ad campaign will be among the largest ever for Microsoft,
spanning print, television and Web outlets, said Tod Nielsen, a
vice president in the company’s developer tools group. Nielsen
would not disclose the exact cost of the campaign but said it is in
the “mid-hundred-million-dollar range”–which would put on par with
other high-profile initiatives, such as the “Where do you want to
go today?” program….”
“In terms of dot coms, a lot of the initial wave of
companies were based on Netscape, Apache and Linux. So Microsoft
might not be the natural first choice (for new Internet
companies),” said Dave Kelly, an analyst at the Hurwitz Group,
a Framingham, Mass.-based consultancy.”