“While new VP of corporate and industry initiatives Linda
Stone explains to the world how Microsoft (MSFT) is nice and
sweet (it’s no accident she comes from the company’s Virtual
Worlds team), the Redmond Giant continues to seek world
domination on a variety of fronts, with mixed results.”
“Today the company releases yet another version of its MSN
online service. This time it’s an integrated Web-media-email
client, intended for less sophisticated Netizens. ZDNet positioned
the new MSN as a harbinger of the company’s Next Generation Windows
Services to be debuted in June, while a Bloomberg report mostly
listed features but noted that MSN is 20 million customers behind
AOL.”
“Perhaps by the time the new products appear, existing handheld
and security issues will be resolved. With its new Windows CE
devices, Microsoft has been trying to do to Palm what it did to
Lotus, Stac, Netscape … you get the idea. But Hewlett-Packard
(HWP) had to admit yesterday that its new Pocket PC devices display
roughly 61,000 fewer colors than ads promise. Security? The Wall
Street Journal published a withering piece chronicling various
shortcomings in Microsoft products and how slowly Microsoft is
responding to these issues. By the end of the piece, reporter Lee
Gomes sounds like a prosecutor.”