Microsoft was on the crest of every new wave of the computer industry for a decade, until the internet broke loose in the early 1990s. Microsoft didn't see the internet coming, and so had to play catch-up, getting involved in the legendary "browser war" with Netscape.
More recently, Bill Gates's company missed out on establishing a dominant search engine -- a niche impressively stolen by user-focused Google.
Microsoft has been struggling to get ahead of the internet curve ever since. Despite years of hype about its always-immenent "dot net" project, the company has largely failed to be innovative in the internet space.
The software giant risks falling into the IBM trap: growing too sluggish and arrogant to predict, or even react quickly to, new market trends. It is unsurprising that as the popularity of blogging soared during the last 12 months, Microsoft gave little indication that it has even noticed the phenomenon.
Until now. The company has announced that its flagship web design product, FrontPage, will feature "prebuilt functionality to ease creation of blogs" (exactly what that means remains to be seen) in its next release, expected to ship late this summer.
Microsoft is also planning an internal panel to discuss employee weblogging. So far, the company has no policy on corporate blogging, even though over one hundred of its employees are known to publish personal web logs.
Several of these bloggers are to "testify" at this panel. But what will Microsoft decide? If it bans employee blogging, Microsoft will give the impression that, like the music industry, it is out of touch with social trends.
On the other hand, Microsoft could regain lost credibility by endorsing and encouraging in-house blogging -- and provide new tools and services to the public, to enhance the wider blogosphere.
In short, Microsoft needs to pay attention to emerging companies like Moveable Type. As does everyone else -- including Google.
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