WinInsider

Philosophically, most computer industry visionaries now agree that Web services--intelligent, XML-based data snippets that abstract the difference between running code locally on one's PC and on specially designed Internet servers--will ultimately prove to be a viable business model. For this reason, Microsoft should be awarded the innovator tag for its early push to .NET, during which time the company educated consumers, businesses, and other customers about terms like XML, SOAP, and Web services, placing them for the first time into common use. But the company is also undergoing an educational campaign of a different stripe, as it is also trying to tie this new software delivery paradigm to a new subscription model, in which it will levy scheduled fees to its customers. Thus, if .NET is successful, it will also mark the end of store-bought cardboard boxes containing one or more CD-ROMs, containing code that's frozen in time. Instead, code will be live, and updated as needed all the time.

In August, Sun continued its anti-Microsoft jihad by paying for full page ads in major US newspapers demanding that Microsoft include Sun's Java technology in the upcoming release of Windows XP. The company also asked major PC makers to include the technology in their new PCs. Microsoft, predictably, was not amused. "It is ironic that we spent 3 years in litigation with Sun over [its] attempt to stop us from shipping Java in Windows, and now [the company is] complaining that we are not shipping it by default in Windows XP," a Microsoft spokesperson said. But the irony, of course, was that Microsoft was the single biggest distributor of Java technology because of its inclusion in IE and Windows. With the removal of Java from XP, this is no longer the case. Sun's efforts ultimately proved futile, and XP shipped without Java technology. Few consumers complained, and those that did could easily download Microsoft's Java JVM--almost obsolete thanks to Sun's lawsuit--from Windows Update. The irony just continues to pile up.