John Herrman says Microsoft — “the lumbering giant, the sprawling monster” with more experience online than Apple and Google combined — is best positioned for Our Future in the Cloud:
[O]ur phones will be mere extensions of our online epicenters; bulging hubs of data from which we conduct our computing, and our lives. Of course [Microsoft’s new social network-y, seriously flawed, and fatally overpriced teenage-aimed feature phones dubbed] Kin and Windows Phone will share more DNA in the future—they’re powered by the same conglomeration of servers. They live in the same cloud.
Whether or not this is a good thing is a different discussion entirely, because it’s well on its way to happening. Google, Apple and Microsoft are all run by people who understand, to varying degrees, that our data is moving online, and all of the companies want to be there when this finally happens, dutifully archiving, repurposing and serving all of your information. Microsoft is just two steps ahead.
One stumbling block could come if Microsoft doesn’t force its sprawling empire of cloud-ish services to work closely together. He points to Google’s single user-ID and password that works across all of its conspicuously linked and branded services and I remember giving up on signing up for Hotmail when I was put through an entire new sign-up even as I already have a Windows Live account.
But that’s not what John is talking about. “The Live.com homepage is a relatively comprehensive Dashboard as-is,” he says. But what they need is not just a cordoned-off site, but a main hub:
This—this—is Microsoft’s secret weapon: depth. If Microsoft rolls out an online service, it doesn’t just join a stable of other, complementary online services, it has the potential to reach every corner of Ballmer’s empire, from cellphones and music players to PCs and gaming systems. A company like Google has to convince its users to jump onboard. Microsoft, via its tremendous software and hardware userbase, already has them—and through Windows, Xbox, Zune and the like, has a direct line through which to feed its online services.
We’ll see. In the meantime, I’ll try my Hotmail signup again.
You can find me @jwindish, at my Public Notebook, or email me at joe-AT-joewindish-DOT-com.