When did you actually trust Microsoft with online computing? Before Vista? I don't see a huge relationship between Vista and their online efforts. Sounds like a bit of MS bashing propaganda from somebody who has never liked or trusted them.

Microsoft has never "gotten" the internet. They still don't. I don't see any reason to suppose they have suddenly "gotten" it here.

Not entirely true. They've really gotten it where console gaming is concerned, moreso than anyone else. The Xbox has been consistently better than its rivals at that.

They're now serving up millions of dollars worth of games per month (allegedly 70% of Xbox owners have used Live Arcade) and are moving into streaming video too. I can now watch MSNBC through it.

They've achieved the dream an internet-connected box on millions of people's TVs. Apple tried and failed miserably with their TV product.

There clearly are people at the company that get it.

The Xbox is not the internet. It is a dedicated internet-powered appliance. And while they may have done a good job there, they have failed in every other internet initiative.

Microsoft does not understand the internet and has never made any notable internet service. Silverlight? Live? MSN? Hotmail? All knockoffs. And they have "failed miserably" every time.

Why would I trust their new internet cloud system when it directly, extricably integrates into all of these other failed initiatives as a feature?

I don't get what you mean. They've failed at search, clearly, but so has everyone but Google. Hotmail is most definitely not a failure, and was a pretty smart acquisition. Silverlight is too new to call a failure, though it's clearly not going to be taking much market share from Flash any time soon. If by MSN you mean their instant messenger, it's the largest by far.

Some huge sites (Myspace, MS's stuff, PlentyofFish) run on their servers and programming languages. Their browser still has the majority of the market share (though arguably not for quality reasons.)

I don't understand this "they're failing at the internet" sentiment. It seems to just be normal anti-Microsoft stuff. They're failing at search, not the internet as a whole.

Everything they do is a knockoff of something else, and it's usually not better (I actually cannot think of a single case where it is better). I am not just randomly anti-Microsoft for religious reasons. They make terrible products that have horrendous user experiences. They do not innovate. In general, I have heard they hire sub-par programmers.

All of this is exaggerated in their internet initiatives. Who uses Hotmail anymore? Who used MSN, which they abandoned for Live? Who uses Live? Why would they try to compete against Flash with Silverlight? What gives them the authority or experience to do such a thing?

And if you asked me which were the two most horrendous monstrosities of popular websites on the internet, I would say PlentyOfFish and MySpace. They are the two sites which have the least sense of design, ergonomics, usability, and general respect.

Why, then, should I trust that they would make good decisions on their backend code and server software?

Hotmail is still the 2nd largest email provider, and only barely. Would you consider Gmail a failure? They're a distant third.

Try a ms webapp and tell me they're not failing. Load up adcenter and try it out.

I prefer hotmail to Yahoo mail by far. I use gmail only through forwarding or pop.

Try outlook web access. Try searching in that. It's a ridiculously horrible experience.

Or try adcenter as I said. Watch those billion iframes with their individual spinner loaders going round for 10 minutes while it loads.

What is adcenter? Is that their search advertising. No doubt they've failed at search, and all it encompasses.

And certainly they've failed at other things that are online. But it's not fair to say they've failed at everything internet related.

adcenter is their answer to adwords/yahoo search marketing(overture).

I'm still in shock that the xbox doesn't have a browser. That's really scary. Either they are just amazingly arrogant and want everything locked down walled garden, or they are still in denial about the importance of the web, or they just don't get it.

Idk. Wii has a web browser and it sucks and nobody uses it. I purchased it out of curiosity, and what a waste.

Without a reasonable keyboard, there's not point. And reading the internet off the TV sucks. I'd rather surf on my Moto Q, and that's saying a lot because surfing on that tiny thing sucks ass.

I'm not sure how you're measuring console success. For me, Nintendo is the clear winner of the current console wars. Nintendo makes hideous amounts of profit on everything. XBox as far as I understand still makes a gargantuan loss. It's a long term strategy, and who knows, maybe it'll play out for microsoft, but I don't think it's relevant to the question of ms understanding the internet. It just shows they understand getting people to use something and taking a massive loss on it.

The Xbox division is now actually turning a profit. Not enough to offset the massive losses it's had in the past, but it is actually generating revenue now.

The Xbox itself is a good product. They overlooked the market the Wii pursued, but then again everyone but Nintendo did. If I recall Nintendo has never had an unprofitable quarter, even during the GameCube days when they were doing much less volume than the competitors.

They've always viewed it as an investment. Honestly, it's worked out pretty damn well. I'd never have guessed they'd have gotten to 2nd place so fast.

Moreover, they've just begun to capitalize on it. As I said, they've got an internet connected box tethered to everyone's TV. They've been working on the dream of the living room PC for years, and now they've finally gotten there.

"they've got an internet connected box tethered to everyone's TV"

Teenage male bedroom TVs perhaps. Lets not get carried away here.

Most people I've seen keep their gaming consoles in the living room since that's where the best TV is.

In fact, my father plays video games much more than I do.

And I consider myself a pretty "hard-core" gamer.

I was speaking only of their internet usage. Wii is still playing catch up a bit there.

What's the browser like on the xbox? presumably some subset of IE7?

There isn't a general-purpose browser on the Xbox. Sadly enough.

Jesus christ. What more proof is needed that microsoft don't get the internet? All in all the wii's opera browser is pretty functional.

It's a huge deficiency. On the other hand, the voice chat, friends lists, instant messenging, game matchmaking, and online marketplace all work pretty well. Nintendo has a browser and an effective marketplace, but the actual game connectivity is lackluster.

Wii is the clear winner.

The DS has been astoundingly successful also. Especially in getting non-gamers to buy it and use it.

Nintendo played a blinding strategy - let Sony and Microsoft play "Who has the biggest willy" with their hardcore gaming hardware which renders 4 gazillion polygons a second, while Nintendo makes fun games with wide appeal.

How about discussing the proposition on its merits, rather than pedigree?

It's not like there are ten new cloud platform come in every day and we have to make a snap decision. We can, in fact, afford to look at the offer itself.

Sorry, but if I want to buy a laptop, I wouldn't buy one from Pepsi. Similarly, if I want something Internet related, I wouldn't get it from Microsoft. I just don't see any evidence they understand it. They have done an absolutely awful job in the last 10+ years.

If I want to buy something development and execution architecture based, I'm happy to buy that from MSFT since they've done exceedingly well there. How many sites out there have been running on google and amzn's dev/exec arch's the past 10 years? A lot less than Microsoft's. As far as them getting the internet or not, who cares. There's more to life than the internet. Java and .NET run the enterprise, not sure who among MSFT, IBM and Sun really "gets the internet" in the sense you're probably working to define.

I recognize they've done exceedingly well at marketing.

Oh, and extorsioning, strongarming, deceiving, FUDing, bribing, monopolizing, etc.

So true. I won't even buy a computer if it comes pre-installed with Vista. Linux and/or Mac please.