Screaming Penguin

Well this story is all the rage everywhere right now, so Screaming-Penguin has 2 cents to add (well at least I do.) Microsoft offering free Internet access (or very low cost, which has also been proposed) is a logical and smart business step. I have a few Microsoft gripes, but this isnt one of them. IF you can benefit from the customers business elsewhere and it is economically feasible for you to offer a service for free that other competitiors charge for, and that offering will gain you more customers, go for it. This is NOT another example of Microsoft buying and eradicating a company. If you can offer the service or product better, and that affects the other company, rather than directly crushing them, then that is fair play. That is called free enterprise, its essential capitalism. The focus should be why can someone charge $21.95 per month for a service someone else can give away? That logically means that the $21.95 companies are overcharging! And I believe that to be true. Dial up, slow, analog based Internet access should not cost $20 per month, that is the real issue. Dial Up ISPs are dinosaurs destined for extinction one way or another. The commodity they have becomes the customer base, not the revenue, because revenue will dry up one way or another. Even DSL and ISDN will eventually be obsolete. Dont get me wrong, right now these technologies are great, and may prolong the effective profitability of some major ISPs (the ones who pull off DSL offerings, which the phone companies will fight.) However, the future will be wireless and will bring mega-bandwidth to everyone, everywhere. Dial Up ISPs need to deal with it now, and realize that they are in an obsolete business and essentially are re-selling someone elses service, that is not a sound business model by any means, and regardless of what technologies win consumer acceptance, it wont work in the long run. That goes for all of them, even the big bad AOL. Check this 32Bits Free MS Interent Access Story for details.