Talking about What’s this?

 

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What’s this?

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As I point out over at Scott’s blog:

 

Brandon, I agree with what you are saying. I too agree it’s going to be an API release. What’s interesting, in my opinion, is how the start.com and forthcoming APIs basically change the rules to the game.

You stated:
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How to make money off this, I don’t know. Ads? But it is difficult to serve up relevant ads when content is not controlled.
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Here is where we don’t agree: It’s in Microsoft’s best interest to not have any adds. It’s the best way to drive the Google wannabe machine into the ground. A portal without adds, is the best portal of all, especially when the web page type portal is replaced by the "plugged directly into the OS portal" because screen realestate becomes much more valuable in this situation.

Here’s how the game has changed.

1. Ads are annoying, I don’t care how relavant and non-obtrusive they are. Look how great a product Tivo is.
2. Google and Yahoo make money off of ads, but at the same time they use this money to pose a threat to Microsoft (G-OS, G-Browser, G-Mail)
3. Vista loves RSS, but it will do more than Just RSS. In my opinion, this API release could be the start of something big. Like I point out in my blog-and you touch on as well–today’s generation doesn’t need web pages to get their fill of "today’s news." An API release with all of the agrigated data makes it very possible to put all the info you want, where ever you want. If I want to drop a startlet in an outlook pane, I will be able to. That way I never have to go to weather.com.

I think it’s in Microsoft’s best interest to provide this as a value proposition add-in to Vista. Add-free. The same way Apple makes money selling Ipods, and bundling Itunes, which makes no money. That’s right, all of this info provided add free where ever I want it.

Google made adds very unintrusive as possible, and relevant as possible because they new users would prefer it over the annoying flash popups and all the other garbage. Microsoft can not drive google out of business by providing a cheaper product because Google doesn’t sell any. They can however leave users with a choice, use Google and get non-annoying adds, or MSN tied in with Windows for the only thing that’s better.

No adds at all. This way, Google has no money left to pay for all that talent.

The Google Killer. They will be hoping the guys at Cnet ask them for interviews after they don’t matter.