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What, if anything, did Microsoft announce?

Monday, July 13, 2009 by Dave Winer.

This morning, before we recorded the RTN podcast, there was evidence that Microsoft had announced something. Apparently they had briefed the press at some undisclosed location on some date we don't know about some products we don't understand.  

Last week I gave Google a ton of grief for announcing an operating system that has been shipping for 17 years and a web browser that had been shipping for about a year as a new product with the same name as the browser that had been shipping for a year.  

In the podcast we talked about a river of realtime news. The analogy fits these pseudo-events in the following way. Sometime in the past weeks Microsoft held a private event, trying to build a dam on the river, hoping to blow the dam at a predetermined time earlier today, thereby creating a rush of news that would impress everyone. It didn't work because apparently the dam developed a leak in the middle of the night and the water rushed down the river of news while everyone was sleeping. No one was impressed. Sad Microsoft. 

The moral of the story: Companies probably should announce products when they are new, and when ordinary people and the savvy insiders can try it all out and share their opinions. That way if the product is any good it will generate interest. If it's not good, no one need bother get excited. 

ReadWriteWeb: Microsoft Office Web Access Not Here Yet.