Peter Sinclair: Media monster looks to be new Microsoft

By PETER SINCLAIR

At this time of year it's customary, almost compulsory, for pundits to predict.

A little modest prophecy is hard to resist in January, when there's not much news anyway and the rashest commentator can lash out in every direction, confident that most readers will have forgiven or forgotten his more wild-eyed inaccuracies come December.

Last year I never got round to the multibillion-dollar AOL/Time Warner merger, mostly because I couldn't work out the full implications of this mega-marriage of new and old media.

I was not alone. Nor could the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, charged with deciding the case, which couldn't make up its mind for months whether its thumb should go up or down.

"With the Microsoft case, and the current temper of American regulators," I told myself at the time, "this massive exercise in miscegenation probably will not be allowed to go ahead."

But I kept putting off saying so.

Just as well. Now that the monitors of broadband access in the US have allowed the merger to proceed almost unfettered by regulation, one has the benefit of hindsight with which to predict that a new IT near-monopoly has just been created by the very people who last year were so industriously trying to dismantle an old one, namely Microsoft.

Promises notwithstanding, "Open access" is, at least for now, effectively a dead duck; and where the US goes, the rest of us tend to follow.

Not only has AOL/Time Warner been granted a stranglehold on cable-based broadband, it has been allowed to retain dominance of the instant messaging market, one of the most promising IT growth areas in the coming year.

Now AOL Instant Messenger is free to continue thwarting the efforts of MSN's Messenger Service, and that of smaller players like Odigo, towards interoperability.

You wouldn't want to be one of the little guys, the small independent operators who started the whole thing off, now this new corporate tyrannosaurus is stomping the net.

As for Microsoft, there's every chance it, too, may be let off the hook under a Bush Administration; and, as so often before, its actions will largely decide the tenor of the internet year.

Its revamped anti-piracy measures - "product activation technology" - are due to come onstream this year with Whistler, its new Windows platform, when Redmond's grip on its consumers will tighten significantly.

Windows 98's Registration Wizard initially got the company in trouble by secretly recording a customer's hardware ID number.

The new system, it is claimed, will completely ignore the contents of a user's hard drive, including Microsoft's own software, a promise which tends to make you go hmm.

Product activation will allow a consumer to load Office 2000 only twice - on a desktop and a laptop. In the event of a crash - not unknown with Microsoft operating systems in the past, and why should Whistler be an exception? - or a rebuild, purchasers will be forced to reactivate the software.

If Microsoft permits them to, of course ...

Even more sinister, it seems to me, is the Microsoft.net strategy, announced last year, of turning software from a class of goods into a web-based service on a subscription model.

It's hard to see shrink-wrapped software vanishing altogether - that goose has laid Bill Gates too many golden eggs in the past to be cooked just yet - even if, for business, the concept of no servers and no IT staff to maintain them is undoubtedly seductive.

But for the general user, the idea of becoming putty in Redmond's hands may not have the same appeal. If your internet service provider goes down - as can happen - you won't even be able to operate your word processor, presumably, for it has been speculated that productivity applications (such as Microsoft Office) will most readily lend themselves to this browser-based future.

That's a big chunk of the user market if a software manufacturer should decide, however apologetically, that your subscriptions are going up from next month. In present circumstances, there wouldn't be a lot you could do about it.

I'm highly dubious about the whole concept - but then, what sort of pundit would I be if I didn't start the year off with a cry of "Woe!"?

BOOKMARKS

FISHIEST [1]: Aeclectic Tarot

Since we are gazing into the future, what could be more appropriate? If you would rather do your own divination than rely on mine, this is the site for you. It includes a free online course in learning how to hazard wild guesses.

Advisory: Your guess is as good as anyone's.

FISHIEST [2]: Option4

Hell hath no fury like the wrath of game fishermen, assorted casters and small boys on the end of wharves who feel their God-given right to haul anything out of the ocean, from the merest tiddler to the mighty marlin, is threatened by bureaucracy.

The raison d'etre of the turbulent band of anglers at Option4 seems to be to make Fisheries Minister Pete Hodgson's life absolute hell until he stops trying to do whatever it is.

I refuse to take sides, but I'm glad I'm not him.

Advisory: Democracy, web-style.

* petersinclair@email.com


Links


Federal Communications Commission

AOL Instant Messenger

MSN Messenger

Odigo

Online Tarot reading

Aeclectic Tarot

Option4