Microsoft Aims to Streamline Web Experience with "Live" Offerings

by Alex Woodie

People are spending more time online, but many are frustrated with the fragmented nature of their Internet experience, Microsoft says. Microsoft executives unveiled a pair of solutions to that problem yesterday in San Francisco, including Windows Live, a new platform designed to be the center of a user's Internet experience, and Office Live, a similar offering targeted at small business users. The services aren't available for production use yet, but you can be a beta tester.

The buzz leading up the announcement signaled Microsoft was up to something. After all, one doesn't assemble Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and chief software architect, and Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief technical officer and of Lotus Notes creator, together in front of the IT press corps without something important and groundbreaking to say. When there's Gates, Ozzie and a large buffet, you know it's going to be a big deal.

Microsoft sort of delivered on the buzz. While the announcements were heavy on promises and short on actual, billable products and services, they signaled that Microsoft is serious about shaking up the old way of doing business and taking a step that, potentially, could have a big effect on the way users interact with Microsoft's technology at some point in the future.

Windows Live is a new Web portal that provides a platform where consumers can accomplish many of their everyday Internet tasks, including visiting Web sites and reading e-mail. Many of the various Windows Live offerings in development or available for beta testing are based on existing MSN services that are already available.

Windows Live

Users get started with Windows Live from the Windows Live home page at www.live.com. (This site is up and running now, and Microsoft is encouraging people to check it out.) The homepage is where users can search the Internet, and integrate RSS feeds and blogs from their favorite news sites and Web blogs onto their home page.

Several important components of the Live experience are not yet available. This includes Windows Live Search, which is expected in 2006. It will allow users to search the Web, their PC or mobile device, or confine a search to a local geographic area. Another is Windows Live Spaces, which will enable users to "find, connect, and nurture deeper relationships with others around the world." It is still in development.

The capability to place a telephone call through the Web is available in beta form with the Windows Live Messenger offering. Windows Live Messenger will be a version of MSN Messenger that builds on Instant Messaging, and enables folks to talk with one another. This feature will presumably utilize voice over IP (VoIP), and will require customers to enter a "third-party commercial relationship" (hence it won't be free).

The possibilities of Windows Live really begin to blossom with the "gadgets," which is what Microsoft is calling the services built and offered by third-party developers, and delivered through Windows Live.

One compelling third-party app built on Windows Live technology is Real Estate on the World Wide Web (RE3W), an application for the commercial real-estate industry developed by Orange County, California-based RE3W. The service links Microsoft's Virtual Earth Web service with a database of more than 88 million real-estate listings held by First American Corp. It enables people to browse a collection of seamlessly integrated satellite photographs, zoom in on a particular building or parcel, and then see data on that holding. The service is also linked with a registry of phone numbers (including the government's Do Not Call list), and has features to help users organize the properties they're interested in.

There will also be security components of Windows Live, including the Safety Center, a free service that lets users scan their computers for viruses, and OneCare, a fee-based service that will protect users against viruses and spyware, as well as manage their backups. Both of these offerings are in beta testing.

There will be different editions of Windows Live, depending on the services customers use. The most basic features will be advertising supported, and therefore free to users, while others will require subscriptions. Microsoft signaled it was serious about the online advertising model when Ozzie unveiled the MSN adCenter, where advertisers can go to buy ads displayed in Live products. The market for online advertising could grow from about $15 billion now to $150 billion by 2015, based on reports Ozzie cited.

Office Live

Microsoft also announced Office Live, a collection of offerings designed to help small businesses build an online presence quickly. The entry-level offering is called Office Live Basics, and will be advertising supported and free to users. Office Live Basics will include a domain name, a hosted Web site with 30 MB of storage, five e-mail accounts with their own domain names, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) Web site designer tool, and Web analytics to analyze the resulting traffic.

Microsoft will build on that with Office Live Essentials, which adds to the Basics offering with support for up to 50 e-mail addresses, access to FrontPage for more advanced Web design than the WYSIWGY editor, and a range of hosted small business applications to automate daily tasks, such as customer management, project management, and document management. Users can access all of this over the Internet, or combine it with their own hosted implementations of Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Office Small Business Edition.

The final offering, Office Live Collaboration, will provide users with hosted access to business management tools managed and maintained by Microsoft, including customer management, project management, document management, and a private Web site for collaborating with employees, customers, suppliers, and contractors. Like Office Live Essentials, this offering can be used on a stand-alone basis or hooked into a customer's existing Microsoft software.

Office Live services will be released in early 2006 via an invitation-only beta solely in the U.S., Microsoft says. Customers can sign up to participate in the beta at www.officelive.com.

Microsoft points to the new live offerings as signs the company is innovating and uses them to deflect criticism for being caught flat-footed against Web competitors like Google. "We are embarking on the richest series of product releases in our company's 30-year history," Gates said. "These new live offerings represent an incredibly powerful way of enabling customers to more quickly access and benefit from the innovations being developed by our product teams."