Microsoft: It's Alive?

So the other week, Microsoft, lurching and grunting inarticulately, held a press conference to announce its latest brainstorm: Windows Live. It's all part of the Redmond gang's plan to try out ad-supported online services, in the works for ever so long and having nothing to do with any company whose name rhymes with Gloogle.

It is just an astonishing coincidence, surely, that the Windows Live page and services (RSS feeds, mailbox, weather, oh my!) look like that company's personalized page.

For some reason, Microsoft decided to launch a beta site without supporting the Firefox browser favored by a large contingent of the Net's beta users. "This black eye?" someone at Microsoft might have said if we sourced these things, instead of relying on snarky fictional attributions. "Oh, it's nothing. We ran into a door." A week later, Microsoft has discovered Firefox.

Seattlest, intrepid news source that we are, can report firsthand how seriously Microsoft is taking this online marketing thing because we had to sit through about two hours of interview they were wrapping up with some poor schnook at our local cafe Saturday morning [insert sadly ironic comment on Microsoft's inability to comprehend the concept of personal space here].

The conversation focused largely on needing to track and profile users of the Office support site so as to market to site visitors more effectively. "You know, are they a doctor or lawyer? How old are they? Where do they live?" Delightful. And it's not like there wasn't a Starbucks across the street.