“More surprising was the lack of complaints about the [Hotmail]
breach. We ran this topic twice on ‘Silicon Spin,’ and nobody
seemed to care. One panelist—Larry Kramer, CEO of CBS’s
MarketWatch.com—said, ‘You get what you pay for.’ It took me
a while to realize that this was exactly the reaction Microsoft
wanted. ‘You get what you pay for!’ It’s free, so it can’t be that
good.
It was then that I recalled the last ‘Microsoft enemies’ list I
saw, which had AOL at the top: ‘(1) AOL, (2) Internet- and
server-based apps, (3) Java- and Jini-stealing developers, (4)
alternate PCs—Linux, BeOS, iMAC, (5) stagnation, (6)
service-based business model.’ Web-based applications are number 2!
This means they must be eliminated for the benefit of Microsoft
sales. No matter that Microsoft owns Hotmail.”
“…my thinking now–since the [Hotmail] security breach–is
that Microsoft wants to submarine the [web apps] category if it
can. What better way than to be a part of the category and do it in
from the inside, innocently? And the best way to scare people is to
make it look dangerous and vulnerable.”