Michael raves about Folder Share

I posted a comment a while back (on you post about the google office rumors), about how Microsoft should get into online storage because it adds a massive amount of value for a customers since it enables the to use their files anywhere (work, library, school, friends computer) with out doing any crazy file server wizardry. Well it’s good to see Microsoft is listening to me :-p Unfortunatle it looks like Foldershare just facilitates the syncing of one PC/Mac to another, it doesn’t support actually storing your files online, but its definitely super cool, super easy to use, and a step in the right direction. This is the first new application I’ve downloaded in a while and I’m impressed.

I downloaded Foldershare a few days ago after I realized MS bought it. It is such a good program, and it works very well at what it does.

Since a lot of my work involves shuttling between computers in my room, lab, and workstations across my college campus, Foldershare saves me the hassle of having to e-mail all of my files back and forth.

Whatever happened to Groove? It fall off planet Earth? FolderShare had a resource fork issue, wasn’t really good for anything but PC files and kinda feature limited. But yeah, the real good stuff, aka Bungie, and the parts that make up 80% of half the software, Great Plains/Nav and etc. all are usually done outside of the company. Or all cobbled together, into Office, Exchange and etc. Microsoft makes some really good stuff, however, but the things that really “excite the customers” normally are not in-house. Funny that.

Chris – but most of the time Microsoft doesn’t just buy a company and re-brand its products.

No, Microsoft woos their developers, and gets them working on the things they know best.

Take Lookout for example. Did Microsoft rebrand Lookout? No. The desktop search project(s) was well underway before that acquisition. But if you ask around, I think you’ll find that the experience that Microsoft acquired from Lookout was valuable to the team.

It wasn’t that Microsoft needed help integrating desktop search into Outlook. But Lookout had already done it. Don’t underestimate the value of that experience.

Actually, Microsoft buys a company, rebrands their stuff, changes it a little, and then a year or two later, when it thinks people have forgotten about the purchase, acts like it created the entire sector the product came from.