After playing around with My MSN and Start, Microsoft has now released Live.com. That’s 3 portals that do pretty much the same thing as far as the average user is concerned (well OK Live.com has some cool web 2.0 ajax ideas). There are also a few other portal type pages in the Microsoft realm including Search, the Microsoft page itself, the Windows portal and the Xbox portal. Compare all those with just one portal each for Yahoo, Google and Apple. The main difference is that these companies have a single point of access to all of their products and services. Can you say c o n s o l i d a t e? Bill gates should probably read “The art of not confusing your users”. Until that gets published he can try Why Business People Speak Like Idiots.
I guess it will be another year before MS decides to release yet another redundant portal with an expensive domain name. Now I’m really beginning to wonder if the giant guerilla can save itself. Another reason why being small is a bonus these days. The latest live.com release is going to somehow tie into a new platform. Wow! Best of luck with that!