There has been a lot of news covered on Microsoft in the last month or so - and a lot of it on this blog. But what does all this different news mean? What is Microsoft trying to accomplish?

I think it all comes down to one thing - to get the support of the community. I think Microsoft has woken up to the fact that the community matters on the internet and is starting to influence more and more what happens in the home and therefore the desktop market. And I think Microsoft are desperately trying to tap the community before they’re left too far behind. They can see Google running away with the show, and desperate times call for desperate measures. Here is some of the recent news and what I think it all means..

Microsoft’s potentially hostile take-over of Yahoo!
The biggest news, I think, in all of the things coming out of the Redmond campus just recently. If they have Yahoo! they have the search engine, sure, but they also get the most popular instant messenger & the social photography site “flickr.” Plus they would also get del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site. You also get lots of other things, like Konfabulator - the desktop widget program, which is installed on a lot of XP user’s machines. Then there’s MyBlogLog - a facility bloggers can install on their websites that will track like-minded visitors to their sites, enabling a different social aspect amongst bloggers. This will give Microsoft a large, established community and will also really push them up the ladder towards Google.

Microsoft rumoured to be after digg.com
Again, another social networking site. This time with a strong & dedicated user base. I’m sure people will moan and bitch about Microsoft taking over the site, but it won’t stop them using it. Give it 3 months after the takeover and nobody will even care. If you have digg.com, you have a large crowd of people (as long as they stay) with you.

Microsoft opening up their APIs to developers
A little bit of a shock, as Microsoft have always kept their cards close to their chest regarding their source code. Why make it available now? To hopefully win brownie points with the open-source community. And to hopefully get them on-board to develop software. They realise there is a huge wealth of programming expertise out there that is untapped (by themselves).

Microsoft to give students free access to programming tools
Get them while they’re young. A move to win brownie points with the up-and-coming (and more importantly) poor students. If you get in early enough, maybe you can influence some of the opinions about Microsoft that might be formed less favourably if they used other programming suites.

IE8 to support web standards
Aimed again at the community. Everyone knows that Firefox is better - it supports the web standards as closely as possible, and it’s more secure. Internet Explorer has always been a law on to itself. Within the last few months Microsoft stated that websites should make themselves “Internet Explorer friendly” rather than the other way around. Well, now, Microsoft have had a change of heart. IE8 will be trying very hard to make itself web standards compliant. Why? Because they are seeing dents in their browser dominance. People are opting to go out of their way not to use Internet Explorer, and Microsoft have to stop the rot.

Silverlight Released
This one is a bit of a reach - and I apologise for that. I really believe the Silverlight platform is aimed at the Youtube & other online video websites. Very similar in spec to flash, Silverlight would be in direct competition with it. And the real uses for flash? Well firstly it’s Youtube & other online media, secondly is probably games and thirdly is website content. Just those three alone would get your name spread a little further, and if a little Microsoft logo popped up in one of the corners everytime a video played - even better.

So what have they achieved, what is going to happen next, and what does the future hold? Well the first thing they’ve achieved already is lots of media exposure. People, websites, bloggers are talking about them - myself included! They’ve also shown their intentions to make themselves “friendly Microsoft.” By opening doors to the community. What will happen next? Well Yahoo will be bought and if they want Digg they will buy that too. Kevin Rose won’t say no to the deal he’ll get. Initially I’m sure everyone will be really upset, while Microsoft continues to make soothing sounds to the rest of the community. And the future? Well we all know Microsoft want to rule the world, so I guess it’s still global domination - at least in the computing world. Maybe they’ll take a chunk out of Google’s market share, but I still don’t think they can beat them in the search / on-line advertising game - they’ve got too much of a head start. But targeting the community, present and future, on the internet itself? That’s an interesting move which could make for an interesting year.