Microsoft reveals how it will make money giving away software

[bill]

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/16/8227847/how-microsoft-makes-money [theverge.com]

Microsoft reveals how it will make money giving away software

While Microsoft has been praised for its bold moves, one question remains: how will Microsoft make money if it gives away software? The answer is freemium.
...
It involves four parts: acquire, engage, enlist, and monetize. Acquire is Microsoft's way of getting people to use a product for free, like Office for iPad. Engage is Microsoft’s plan to get them hooked on the product and leverage other parts of its ecosystem to keep someone using the service. Enlist is simply finding fans to keep the circle going, and then monetizing is figuring out who will pay for subscription versions of the service they’re hooked on.

[incrediBILL]

Sounds exactly like the way cults work.

Whatever happened to Microsoft's old business model, building a product so compelling that every had to use it and it was so mission critical nobody could live without it. Oh yeah, Apple finally snapped out of their daze and took over the personal computing business while Microsoft sat on all that tech for many years and did nothing except business products. Then Linux came out for free and took over the rest of the computing world, where Linux is now running most of the servers out there plus all the little gizmos, kiss Windows CE g'bye.

In other words, MS had it all, and fumbled the ball, and is now trying to redefine how free software works and call it their own.

Fascinating.

This from the idiots at Microsoft that took a thriving business from both Lotus cc:Mail and Netscape had and decimated it giving browsers and email clients away for free. People were willing to pay for this stuff, but no, Microsoft was so smart they decided it should be free and now they're trapped in this stupid mess they've made.

Good.

[bill]

Well, they did lock up the enterprise markets with their Office suite. It's good that the pressure from others changed their tune because now anyone can access Office software for little or no cost. Don't count them out yet.

Not sure I'd mourn the passing of cc:Mail. I was forced to use it for years and was very happy to move to an Outlook/Exchange solution after that. cc:Mail was a nightmare for me.

Netscape on the other hand, I was sad to see go...although we have Firefox as a result. I was a paying Netscape user from the beginning. They had the best product out there until IE came and wiped out their user-base.