Simon’s Blog

In the web services world, there’s a big on-going (pun not intended) debate about RESTful web services. If you haven’t been following the debate, you can start at the most recent post on Tim Bray’s blog, and work your way back. I’m not going to chime in on this one in detail. I’ll just say that for the last decade, at least, people have been whining about discussing this stuff. From 30,000 feet, it’s always the same old argument from whoever is pushing the latest protocol: the current approach doesn’t work; so we needed to invent a brand new way of doing things. Funny that - you know, there are actually still plenty of CORBA services still in production, working just fine… Amazing how that can be, given that “CORBA doesn’t work”, isn’t it? However, I digress. Progress is good. And, that isn’t the point I want to make here. Part of this debate includes a big fuss about Microsoft going off in its own direction, not using the protocols that others are developing. Of course, they had a good reason - the new approach other people are developing doesn’t work; so we needed to invent a brand new way of doing things. Sound familiar? Anyway, people were suspicious about its motives for doing this, given the company’s history.

I was intrigued to see the stance taken by a Microsoft employee, Yaron Goland, on this matter. Yaron says,

And no, we don’t care about lock in. At least the people who give me orders have a good understanding that the days of lock in are long over.

I wonder if Yaron thinks anyone will believe that. The days of lock-in are “long over”? Really? Define “long”! Hmmmmmmm… actually, I wonder if Yaron believes this. Microsoft has built its exceptionally successful business around locking people in. There’s a reason why Office and Exchange dominate so completely in the market place - lock-in. So forgive me, but I simply don’t believe that Microsoft is planning to abandon a tactic that has served it so well.

However, it really doesn’t matter what I, or anyone else, believes. It’s a company’s actions that show what it is, far more than the words of its employees (well-intentioned as I’m sure they are). The bottom line is this: if/when Microsoft stops trying to lock people in to using its core products, like Office and Exchange, then people will believe that Microsoft has given up on its “lock-in” strategy. Until that time, I’m afraid they’re just going to have a tough time convincing anyone.

By the way, Microsoft isn’t unique here. Despite all the “whiter than white” claims to the contrary, pretty much all the companies out there, trying to persuade people to invest time and money building on the web services they offer, are trying to lock people in. That’s obviously not good for consumers of those services; but if it works, it’s very profitable for the providers of the services. That’s why they do it. That’s why Microsoft is able to put billions of profit in the bank every quarter, despite the truly massive amount of money it spends on R&D.