Vizrea > Webfives > MSN Live Media?

Microsoft’s coming late to the game again it seems. Disregarding the new challenge for Microsoft’s erratic online brand team - Live Photo? MSN Images Live? Live Media? - does it make sense for Microsoft to get into the online media hosting scene so late in the day?

Yes, there’s marketshare. But that’s not so great. Certainly, in-house talent makes a lot of sense; there’s a good team at Webfives, and assuming they are sticking around post-acquisition it’s an appreciable asset.

But I can’t help but feel that this step seems to symbolise a company that’s lost its core direction and isn’t entirely comfortable in its new environment. Microsoft doesn’t understand online.

Bill Gates was in the business of selling code. It’s been hugely profitable. Profit on the manufactured product was (and is) superlatively valuable. Assuming your code is any good of course.

Yet scale has thrown Microsoft off-track. Vista looks more and more like it’s dead in the water, and Microsoft’s online business has been comprehensively outmanouvered by Google and even Yahoo!.

Google is ‘Thin Client’. Microsoft is getting terminal.

Microsoft need to sell code to be run on consumer’s products. This is their core profit driver. Google, famously, will not discuss its one, core piece of ‘code’: its algorithm. Nor does it need to. Their code simply functions. We access its GUI and restricted in/out functions.

Because Google’s code (yes, and infrastructure) is better than anyone else’s they win. That won’t change regardless of how many acquisitions you make. Not unless you can change the game.