Will Microsoft consider ad-supported software model again?
Posted by bionicoder on February 24, 2009
Back to year 2005, there were hot discussions about ad-supported software model in ZDNet blogger community. The topic was orginated by a news that Microsoft was ruminating on ad-supported software that leverages its new adCenter platform. Although no specific plans have been made, executives within Microsoft were examining whether it makes sense to release ad-supported versions of products.
In July 2007, there was another news said that Microsoft Works would become a free, ad-funded product that will compete directly with Open Office and Google Docs & Spreadsheets. However this did not really happen. Microsoft Works 9 is sold at $39.95 currentlly.
Will Microsoft consider ad-funded software model again? I really don’t know. But looking at the background that drove Microsoft to consider ad-funded software model. I can bet that this topic may be brought up again in the future. The background is the competition from Open Source and freeware growth. Till today, the competition is still there and even hot.
As the leader in operation system and business applications, Microsoft has to be very careful in any change of its revenue model. Any change made by Microsoft will make a deep impact on the whole software industry.
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This entry was posted on February 24, 2009 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Software. Tagged: ad-supported, Advertisement, Advertising, Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Jason said
With its powerful data warehouse and huge number of customers, MS can make a big impact if they use data mining in the right way.
Quincy said
Some changes have been occurred in digital media and web analytics today. Utilizing “data feeds” for other knowledge management applications such as text mining is useful.
Ad-Supported Version of Microsoft Office 14 May be Available « Bionicoder’s Blog said
[...] Office 14 May be Available By bionicoder On Feb 24th 2009, I posted an article asking that Will Microsoft consider ad-supported software model again? Now this will become true. On March 3rd, Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop said [...]
XJ said
This is exactly what I said in the previous comment. cool.