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.
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.
Oh, and extorsioning, strongarming, deceiving, FUDing, bribing, monopolizing, etc.
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.
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?
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.
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?
Or try adcenter as I said. Watch those billion iframes with their individual spinner loaders going round for 10 minutes while it loads.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Teenage male bedroom TVs perhaps. Lets not get carried away here.
And I consider myself a pretty "hard-core" gamer.