Microsoft made a big time error years ago, with Hotmail, and an unreasonably crippled free storage where the aim was to get millions of people ponying up fifteen bucks a month for more.
Google came up with Gmail, and gave sensible free storage and now who uses Hotmail?
Wind up to now. There is Box and Dropbox giving limited free cloud storage. Sync service with desktop workstation local storage, but what, 2 gig? Not enough to matter. Microsoft makes 25 gig available for free in its trying to get market share for the cloud, but you can only sync if you use Windows 7. Windows XP is disfavored, go spend a few bucks for Bill.
Now, Mozilla has Firefox 4.0 in release version and Google has Chrome, each a better browser than IE. So what's Microsoft's answer? You can download a free IE 9, but only if you use Windows 7.
Clearly the intent is as it was with Hotmail. Continuing to lose browser market share rather than compromise a will to nickle and dime the public, buy Windows 7 or eat dirt. The corporate inertia against moving from Windows XP is all that keeps home users from being thrown by Microsoft under the bus (aka no longer supporting that product, will only offer upgrades, including security patches, for this-and-that).
So, I had a free Dropbox and a free Box account, and never used either. I have Microsoft Skydrive because it is 25 gig, and for free, so I can stick pdf documents there for linking via the blog. Also, with less storage Google offers Google Docs.
You can read online Word format files, other MS formats, Open Office, and compose using Google Docs software. You can read pdf and Postscrip files now, without the awful kludgy Adobe reader.
So, build a better mousetrap and give it away free, and the using community will be loyal to you, for now. Hotmail had and lost market share. Netscape, ditto. Google and Microsoft are the big current players for consumer and corporate desktops. Apple and Google for smart phone operating systems. Cisco sitting alone on routers for the actual Internet fiber and wires.
Then there is Facebook. To me a zero. Many others like and use it. It apparently does not charge for anything, instead making its money off of compromising user privacy on behalf of users who care or don't know, and firms that pay for targeted-advertising info. Google has that in its business plan too, but somehow it's harder to dislike Google.
Any reader hot to download Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, having cogent reasons for feeling that way, is invited to post a comment.
It seems now the HTML5 war over HD video is what's hot, Microsoft and Apple backing one codec approach, Mozilla and Google another, and Adobe and Flash having current market dominance for less than HD quality video.
I dislike Adobe.
I avoid its products, even the free reader because there are alternatives.
I will switch to Windows 7 when it's necessary but now, it's not.
Somehow you cannot dislike the hardware vendors as much as the software vendors, but both are needed. There is Google Android for phones, a chrome operating system is being tested with Google having given out a few low-budget low-featured portable machines without local storage, to see how acceptance of the "thin client" concept actually works in practice. My guess is that if they see the free portable machine folks NOT using the thing too much, they may wait longer.
Reliance on cloud storage, and on cloud applications may be the ultimate direction the market takes. Yet, is now the time, or is there a push marketing effort, to get early market share and to push the market where customer demand might not really care to go?