Bundling is not enough
June 2, 2004
The conventional wisdom with a lot of the software industry is that Microsoft can just bundle any reasonably decent application into the Office suite, even if it's not the best in its category, and it will have the same effect that bundling an application into Windows has: market dominance.
I was flipping through a pile of old CDs that I have around, though, and there's a lot of evidence that Office isn't nearly as effective a tool for domination through bundling. Anybody other than me remember Microsoft Vizact? What about PhotoDraw? (PhotoDraw actually made to a version 2.0) How 'bout the Office Photo Editor, which Dvorak so lamented? On the Mac side, FrontPage used to come with Office, but it's dead now too.
There's an even wider array of failures if you just count ancillary programs that connect to Office. Outlook Mobile Manager was discontinued, only to be replaced by Mobile Information Server, which was also discontinued.
As a developer, it's scary to see Microsoft abandon so many platforms that presumably cost them millions of dollars to develop. But as an end-user, it's a nice reassurance that there are still some balancing forces in the desktop productivity market.
There's lots of other general productivity software that's died on the vine at Microsoft, too. I used to sell Microsoft Profit, their small business accounting package that was written by Great Plains (in Visual Basic, no less!) about a decade ago as a precursor to Microsoft's acquisition of the company. Some transparently defensive product acquisitions died, such as Liquid Motion, though that's less of a surprise.
There are even failures of programs that were aimed at business users but shipped with Windows itself. Schedule + came with Windows 95 (and its precursor, Windows for Workgroups 3.11) but evaporated soon after.
Even the most ambitious bundling Microsoft has ever done, shipping the Microsoft Exchange client (later renamed Windows Messaging) with Windows 95, didn't really go anywhere, and Microsoft ended up settling for Internet Mail and News, later renamed Outlook Express, as the primary messaging client on Windows machines.
Of course, being bundled with Office never hurt an app's chances. And that's a good thing, since some of the most creative and interesting apps Microsoft has done lately, such as InfoPath and, especially, OneNote, deserve a good chance. Interestingly, those two applications are the ones that companies are mostly likely to have to buy separately from their existing Office licenses, since they're not bundled with the majority of the suites that Microsoft ships.
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I, too, like MS PhotoEditor. I always install it on any PC I'm going to use regularly. No, it's not a great program, and I certainly wouldn't want to have to use it for industrial-strength applications, but I'm glad it exists. It is fast. It's the fastest way I know to resize any photo. Whenever I'm using a Mac and want to resize something in iPhoto, I groan and long for MS PhotoEditor.
Also, this is my first-ever TypeKey comment. I just signed up. I didn't know what I thought of TypeKey until now. I don't like it. I don't like having to register for *anything*, let alone to leave a comment on a weblog. I won't register to leave comments on a Blogger weblog; I'm not sure why I registered here. Also, the process was a tad confusing, if only because I tried to complete it without reading anything. I'm sure the instructions are clear, but they weren't tremendously obvious as I filled out the form, so when I was finished, I couldn't figure out what to do next. Only when I received a link via e-mail did I realized what the problem was. That's a bonehead error on my part, obviously, but still kind of annoying.
On preview: er, how come when I preview, all the text is lost from the comment? I had to go back, copy the text, and then paste it into the preview page's comment box. Also, my name & etc. are missing on the preview page (the preview text reads 'posted by at June 2') — I thought the whole point of TypeKey was that it remembered this stuff...
Okay, I'm done complaining now. :)
Mobile Information Server hasn't actually been discontinued, the functionality has just been rolled entirely into Exchange 2003 (it was an addon for Exchange 2000). It's actually been improved, and it's better this way.
I don't remember the client that shipped with Windows 95 being referred to as the Microsoft Exchange client - the Microsoft Exchange client was a separate product that shipped with Exchange server that eventually morphed into Outlook (not Express). The version that shipped with Windows 95 couldn't actually access Exchange server...
Mobile Information Server hasn't actually been discontinued, the functionality has just been rolled entirely into Exchange 2003 (it was an addon for Exchange 2000). It's actually been improved, and it's better this way.
I don't remember the client that shipped with Windows 95 being referred to as the Microsoft Exchange client - the Microsoft Exchange client was a separate product that shipped with Exchange server that eventually morphed into Outlook (not Express). The version that shipped with Windows 95 couldn't actually access Exchange server...
The cover story from Seattle Weekly is all about Microsoft and its poor business practices. In particular, it discusses how its reliancy on Windows will be its doom. Although there has been plenty of talk on how open source is going to take down "the borg," this is the first article I've read that discusses how and why it is possible. Check it out here.
But thats how microsoft does business , take out the product from market before every one uses it they come out with an operating system before even rectifying the old one .
I'm guessing Publisher will go the same way, based on my experience with it. I made a webpage to test its html conversion, and besides loading it with the same kind of garbage code you see in Word html files, it actually converted plain text -- Arial, no special formatting -- into a .gif!
Andrew, relying on the web as a general resource for good information may lead you to make an ass out of yourself.
Word's html conversion is not done for people who wants to design a web site. If you attempt to do that, don't accuse Microsoft, accuse yourself. HTML is simply another file format for Word, Word simply writes into it so that it can re-read it afterwards. The idea is to put such documents on the web, so people can view it, and yet at the same time, they can re-edit the same document.
Similarly, publisher also doesn't try to be a web site designer. You have to use Frontpage for that purposes, and if you are going to bash Microsoft because you are trying to use Publisher as a web site design tool, then you automatically admit your intelligence level.
Bundling or non-bundling do not save programs, the value of the program itself is the one which sells. Since each office program can be sold separately, you can completely bundle everything. Program has to offer a value one way or another, and Microsoft knows this quite well, unlike many net thugs on the net attacking companies here and there.