Google domains going after Outlook? MSN did that months ago…

Selling your audiences eyeballs to Google does not make you a Google employee. Even you know that. Or do you?

Jake: and just what is the difference? You are selling your service to someone else for money. Dictionary.com definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=employee A person who works for another in return for financial or other compensation. That's exactly what you're doing when you put advertising on your page.

headline-wise I don't see anything wrong there...Gmail attacks Outlook...I don't see the author claiming that Gmail is coming out with an innovative new feature not found elsewhere...

Farooq: the problem is that MSN is doing the exact same thing and better (we have 20 universities, they only have one). But, thank you for not noticing the bias here.

Quick: tell those articles on Memeorandum apart. One is the real Google blog. What are the other ones? Reprints? Hmmm.

The company that writes the checks always get better coverage. Why isn’t anyone looking? Well actually lots have, namely that snarky cynical "downright always negative" press, that you have catcalled. Just not bloggers, as the Googlejuice lovefest knows no bounds. But glad you are coming around, by my calculations, around 3 years late.

But you are missing the real story at play here, click fraud. Your friends and everyone else are making money of the backs of duped advertisers. Hell to pay when that bubble pops.

That Desktop App is a privacy nightmare, don't use in China that's for sure. And gmail totally creeps me out with the near instant Ad Sense keywording ads, before I even have a chance to read the email. But it's been crashing so much, downright useless half the time, AJAX phasw.

The problem (if we can call it that) is that Google is the internets "God Child". Like AJAX or ROR is to RIA. Google is still the hipster in town. For MS to get PR on their implementation of the same thing would have been fair I agree. MS has Exchange etc.. (this could be why). Google stepping on MS toes, could also be why.

I read an article lately in a programmers magazine that talked about RIA (rich internet applications) with all the regular hype "It's gonna be bigggg!!!!". Anyway one thing that got me was that they mentioned AJAX, XUL, Sparkle, Lazlo, and ROR but did not once mention Adobe Flex 2.0 or 1.5?

Is journalism becoming biased? Here are the facts/comparisons, but we’ll leave out mentions of the ones we don’t like, or bothered to research on. Or we only like open source so that’s all we’ll talk about. Not that the readers of the information would benefit from a round table article that covers all the corners. I have to believe that open source junky or not, most developers try to use the tool best suited for the job at hand (err could be wrong). Or maybe it just sells more adSence….

In any case I read it, and was not surprised. However, I doubt it’ll get that far. It just smells bad corporate data stored on Google server “Pheewwwww !”. But hey, don’t be evil…

Jason

Maybe people are excited over it because Windows Live Mail is just available for IE users and a limited amount of beta testers.

While with Gmail, it works with any modern browser and you can't give away invites anymore they are so many.

Besides, from what I have seen, I like Gmail's interface better then Windows Live Mail. Simpiler, faster, and does what I need. Not to mention the constant little improvements.

As one of the bloggers linked on Memeorandum, I have to observe that I did prominently mention Windows Live Domains. Moreover, the basic argument is the same whether a customer chooses Microsoft's or Google's hosted solution - it's a hit on the traditional software business (e.g. Outlook and Exchange). By the way, Adam Sohn ought to get the "20 universities/colleges" story out.

As for Google ads, it's a choice among limited alternatives based on perceived functionality and utility just like anything else. When Microsoft's adCenter or Yahoo's YPN get out of beta, the calculation may change, but today's ubiquity of Google Ads is a reflection of the state of the market, not some grand conspiracy.

I mentioned the MSN College and University programm on my blog on the first of Januari: http://www.karssenberg.nl/weblog/2006/01/msn-co... but I guess you don't read Dutch (weblogs)? Windows live edu offers more than Google does, but we're still waiting for rollout in Holland. Google mostly offers it's service worldwide when it's released.

"Every single blogger on that Memeorandum entry is sponsored by Google ads. Except one, which is the official Google blog."

Perhaps the memeo entry has changed, but several of the bloggers there now don't run Google ads. Me, for example.

And I'm sure many of the ones who do get maybe $10 a month out of Google. We live in a different ad revenue universe than yours. So I think describing them as being sponsored by Google is a little over the top, with all due respect.

Great insight scoble, but where is MSN? I am waiting for this massive product release where they dominate the world, but the window is fading fast.

There is a simple answer to why Google News was more popular. It is GMail stupid. Very few people in their right mind in US at least sign up for an e-mail account with Hotmail. Almost everybody prefers Yahoo or GMail. Google was offering GMail and that was the big draw, at least for me.

I have tried the new hotmail beta and it sucks beyond any doubt. Don't even get me started on the Hotmail SPAM filters.

Cheers :)

I'm with Rob -- it's fine to be upset that not everyone mentioned Microsoft and its program (which I didn't even know about until now) but dragging the whole conflict of interest bogeyman into the mix is a little over the top. Methinks thou dost protest too much, Robert -- and it demeans your argument. Just for the record, I think I've made a total of $0.07 so far from my Google ads.

I have to agree with @1 and disagree with Scoble @2. Accpeting advertising dollars does not make you an employee of the company paying you. Does ABC work for Pepsi because they accepted money from them for ads during the Superbowl? Is the NYTimes an "employee" of any company that they accept advertising from?

Rob, when I say "headlines on Memeorandum" I only see four headlines. Actually, mine is one of them now. Paul's is #2. Nick's is #3. Garett's is #4. Yeah, there are other bloggers listed under each of those, but they don't display as headlines.

Very well said Scoble ! It is high time Blogsphere did a Ctrl+Alt+Del on its passion for all things Google

But is that related to Google AdSense ads on their blogs ? Well ! I dont know ... I still indulge in my bits of Google bashing and still using those Google products that add value to my life (Search, Gmail, Desktop search)

Larry, yes, ABC does work for Pepsi, and NYTimes works for whomever does advertising in their paper. They make hardly any money from readers(subscriptions are nothing) or viewers, it's all advertising. So, yes their paychecks come from advertising mainly. If Pepsi says, "We're pulling our $10 million ad campaign because we don't like the content of XXXX show." Do you think ABC snubs their nose at them? No advertisers? Everyone is fired.

Robert, Great rant. and yeah, microsoft DID launch this months ago and I wrote about it at http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/25/windows-li.... I don't get all of the hype this week.

Mike

Let's do the math. Microsoft spent $ 8.7 billion in sales and marketing last year. That is more than Google's revenues.

How much does Microsoft spend on advertising with WSJ and InformationWeek? With Gartner and Forrester? With Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs? Should we not ask if their reporters, industry and financial analysts are magnitude more biased towards Microsoft than some blogger who earns pennies from Google ads?

This week has been full of "conflict of interest" discussions. The WSJ on bloggers. InformationWeek on industry analysts. But as I wrote on my blog - The buyer is in charge, has been in charge, will be in charge. That is why most well structured procurements take input from a number of sources and have various steps in the process, and minimize any bias any single influencer may have.

And larger vendors still have more bucks to spend on the traditional influencers. So the question to ask is - Microsoft, why did you not publicize the MSN announcement yourself - spend a bit of the $ 8+b budget? Could it be because you really do not want to cannibalize your enterprise Outlook revenues?

The big difference in your comparison is that my opinion of Google has nothing to do with the performance of my google ads. The performance of Microsoft has everything to do with your compensation (tied to bonuses, stock options, raises, etc)

-James

A semantic difference at best, Robert. And one of the headliners you mention (Nick) is already saying that the $.50 a day he makes from Google doesn't make a difference - which was the point, after all, yes?

Perhaps the better question to be asking is why Microsoft isn't more successful in reaching the audience that at least you are concerned about in your post - here on the blogosphere. At least half of the follow-ups I've read didn't even know about the MSN hosting offering (I sure didn't). It just can't credibly be laid at the foot of financial bias among bloggers.

So - where's Microsoft's marketing mojo?

I agree with you Scoble. There is a big Google love in the blogosphere and it is annoying at times.

One of the comments above asked if the journalism is becoming biased. Personally, I believe journalism is rarely unbiased but in today's world, especially tech wise it became "easy" more than it is biased. What I mean is that I imagine a journalist's job (no offense) became to monitor meme trackers, A-list bloggers and write about the hype rather than what is underneath without doing much or any research.

Good point, Vinnie.

Google's announcement is news because they have no existing business to cannibalize--the possibility that they can hurt MS's Exchange business is apparent.

Microsoft, OTOH, is positioning itself to cannibalize its existing business, but will it pull the trigger if it's not forced to?

I doubt it.

Off the top of my head, the only company that cannibalizes its existing businesses early and often is Apple.

Thank your lucky stars Scoble: its because that MS is not cool that you have a job evangelising MS stuff - Google, like Apple, has *passionate* users (or should that be fans?) who are only too glad to spread the love!

And if you want to know how MS treats its fans I can tell you about some real examples.

Ye, there is too much Google love. Hell, I wrote about it and did interviews on that years ago. And yes, if you're making serious money from a company your judgements are bound to be tempered a little bit.

If the NYT was making 10M$ from Pepsi, you can bet that would have a subtle effect. However, if they were making 13$/year from Pepsi I don't think so. Does the NYT feel pressure from every single classifieds advertiser?

And, as far as MS doing this first, so? I'm more of a Microsoft fan than most folk, but the central point of this is true: web-based apps are making a run on desktop-based ones. And, like it or not, Gmail is (perception-wise and influence-wise, ESPECIALLY with the market that we're talking about) big boy in web-based, and Exchange is the big boy in desktop-based.

While the "headlines" (when you get down to semantics) on Memeorandum aren't reflecting the "truth" (however you slice it) of the matter, the core story is still there.

Instead of arguing with the semantics of this, why not expand the discussion? Personally I couldn't care less about the webmail debate. I only use Gmail for archiving all of my email and then for fast searching. Soon as I have O

Ye, there is too much Google love. Hell, I wrote about it and did interviews on that years ago. And yes, if you're making serious money from a company your judgements are bound to be tempered a little bit.

If the NYT was making 10M$ from Pepsi, you can bet that would have a subtle effect. However, if they were making 13$/year from Pepsi I don't think so. Does the NYT feel pressure from every single classifieds advertiser?

And, as far as MS doing this first, so? I'm more of a Microsoft fan than most folk, but the central point of this is true: web-based apps are making a run on desktop-based ones. And, like it or not, Gmail is (perception-wise and influence-wise, ESPECIALLY with the market that we're talking about) big boy in web-based, and Exchange is the big boy in desktop-based.

While the "headlines" (when you get down to semantics) on Memeorandum aren't reflecting the "truth" (however you slice it) of the matter, the core story is still there.

Instead of arguing with the semantics of this, why not expand the discussion? Personally I couldn't care less about the webmail debate. I only use Gmail for archiving all of my email and then for fast searching. Soon as I have O12 I'll only use it for online archiving (since search is so, so much better in O12). It's a non-issue for me. As is your cry (continuously, this is the 4th or 5th post this year on it) that bloggers get tainted by ad dollars from AdSense.

It's okay, though, if this matter isn't solved in your head by Blogonomics we'll have lots of time to talk it out ;-)

Google is the new kid on the block. When they do things it is still exciting. When Microsoft does things it is just another item in a long line of items that will either impress or disappoint depending on your preferences. New kids on the block always get all the exciting press.

As for Google's Adsense biasing bloggers, I doubt that is really a factor. I threw the code for it on my site because it was an easy way to make a buck. So far I'm having more trouble making that second buck. I never think of the consequences of what I write because I don't feel that Google cares what my opinions are as long as they can take up a little space on my site.

Robert wrote: "Why didn’t anyone write a headline like “MSN goes after Outlook?” Hmmmm? A little Google love going on in the blogosphere? What’s behind that love?"

Maybe because people see MSN and Outlook as the same company?

It's also news because it tries to break the near-monopoly MS has on mail clients in large organizations. Maybe Robert has numbers, but I would think the % of large corporations that run Exchange and Outlook is large.

Afetr I posted my comment above I noticed I forgot to add

you say "Every single blogger on that Memeorandum entry is sponsored by Google ads."

Mine - Deal Architect is not...

my firm does help CIOs evaluate and negotiate tech contracts and anything to help reduce the cost of Exchange and the related outsourcing and internal labor whether from MSN or Google is welcome...

I wonder how many other ideas we have that Google will get credit for?

<Daria>
Aren't you even a little afraid that there's a hell?
</Daria>

Robert, did you actually read those discussion pieces because Squash, the third blog you should have come across doesn't have any ads at all and it discussed the Microsoft initiative in some detail and did so before the Google announcement...

"Microsoft already has this with its Windows Live Custom Domain management. I tried it out today and were it not for the fact that I’m so in love with GMail and the pitiful amount of storage each account comes with, I would have been very tempted to shift all of our company mail accounts to this system. When Google allows me to manage my domains with them, and assuming we can keep out muti-gig maiboxes, I’ll be there in a flash."

Barron's isn't drinking the Google kool-aid; here's a (hopefully) valid link to Monday's cover story:

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB11396180511...

I feel it is flawed to say:

1. Bloggers speak of Google related news to earn adword hits. If it was so, Google would have been an echo chamber where all self realted searched would have happened. I presume folks do search for M$FT too on Google. If you feel that folks arent interested in what you are doing, thats another problem, nothing to do with adwords.

2. I guess M$FT spends a lot of money in Advertising. Say it is 5Billion$ a year. I can always say that Wall Street Journal or The Economist is biased towards you as it earns a lot of money from you. Isnt it the same logic you propound?

I don't get the Gmail-versus-Outlook argument. Don't most environments running Outlook have Exchange sitting somewhere on the network? If that's the case, Gmail needs calendaring, at minimum, before it could be called an Outlook 'killa'.

Bloggers aren't some bastion of journalistic objectivity, and I don't know any sane person that's suggested as much. It's not any big secret that Google is perceived a lot better than Microsoft, so I'd blame fanboyism before I imagined any great big conflict of interest conspiracy. The excitement over Gmail for domains most likely extends from a love of Gmail, love that in general MSN just doesn't have, whether that's fair or not.

You can't ask for love (nor respect and a lot of other things) :)

Nitin: yes, and when you see that bias don't you point it out? Slashdot does, for sure!

Both here and at the tone seems to be nothing more than a schoolgirl whining that she's not been invited to the sleep over.. "nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I'll eat some worms"

And you know what? it's all true.

There ARE a LOT of people who will diss or ignore everything you do because you're MS. Over the last 20years or so, the actions of yor company has made so many enemies, both within the and without the industry. You ARE being ignored where possible, because people don't like you, because they don't like how you go about your business.

"Some of my blogging friends make more money off of Google ads than I am paid by Microsoft"

They're lying to you. I know on our social networking website people have requested direct google adsense integration, so I am working on that this week.

Don't believe everything everyone tells you. BTW, http://www.milliondollartoilet.com Let people know please. We're using the money to fund our new free open source linux distro at http://www.deitylinux.org. So it's not money that's going on fancy cars and fast women.

Well, google doesn't routinely censor people's blogs, and turn over search data to the us government. You can't discount the fact that unrelated corporate activities alter the public's perception of a company.

I loved the way Reeves from Windows Live Mail Team has written about this "Live-domains-first" thing on the Live Mail Blog:

"Just the other day I ordered cheeseburger and the person serving me my lunch asked me if I knew that Google had invented the idea of cheesy meat between two slices of bread three years ago… and it's been in beta ever since. :-) Yeah, yeah, perhaps I’m being dramatic but sometimes I feel like Google is going to overshadow Al Gore and get credit for inventing the Internet."

I think we all need to get over our Google love.

"Well, google doesn’t routinely censor people’s blogs, and turn over search data to the us government. You can’t discount the fact that unrelated corporate activities alter the public’s perception of a company."

Google isn't in the middle of having to comply with one of the biggest anti-trust settlements in US history. Not to mention korea, and Europe, I wouldn't be surprised if the govt of zimbabwe doesn't have them jump through some hoops as well.

The Govt says jump and Microsoft says "how high"?

They do whatever the govts ask of them as long as they're allowed to keep making money. That's the bottom line for a corporation. Everything else is an afterthought. The money microsoft put into humanizing it's image was wasted indeed. No matter how much money you spend, people won't believe bs.

you are just a stupid bastard scoble.

these ads are from all the companies that paid for them. google is just a intermediary.

or you could just buy a php script like say http://www.phpmail.com and run email off of your existing webserver with php and pop or imap.

MSN and google will probably end up charging you an arm and a leg in the long run. When you purchase your own webmail software, you get to keep it indefinately with no recurring charges.

Additionally, phpmail3 is so bewilderingly robust that it handles webmail and pop/smtp email for over 4000 members of the social networking website, sitespaces.net.

There's no need to have Microsoft and Google man handle your precious and valuable SQL data when you can keep it all under your own control on your own hosting on your own website of your choosing.

That's the power of a php based script solution.

There used to be an old rule of thumb(pre-internet) that said wait ONE DAY after writing before sending an aggressively worded or defensive tone letter/note/memorandum....Well of course that advice is impossible to heed in this new instantaneous blog-centric-world.

However there is WISDOM in the concept. Is an One Hour the New Day?

In Certain Circumstances...I think So.

Yeah, I noticed that as well. I've got a domain registered with Live Mail, and it works good except for the inability to use it with Outlook (or am I missing the DIY on that?).

At any rate, I believe the press always prefers to report on the "underdog", even when it is a mis-perception.

If anything, there has been a gradual turning of sentiment against Google recently, with cheerleading by Dave Winer and other A-list bloggers about all sorts of silly Big Brother scenarios.

AdSense clients are not employees of Google. If anything, Google is their employee, since Google gets money from something happening on the client's site. How about that?

I'd like to check out the subscription stats of the those bloggers you refer to who "make more than you do".

Did you miss all the FON controversy or is this your take on the same problem?

Good point about MS doing it first.

I signed up for MS Live Domain quite a while back. Like the interface and like Hotmail.

However, I will give Gmail Domains a shot as well before I can compare the two.

But yes, MS did do it before Google.

So, the reason why people didn't write Microsoft was releasing an Outlook killer is because you aren't. The interface is plain, vanilla hotmail, and I think most people would be very dubious of the idea that Microsoft would actually let this cannibalize Exchange sales if it posed a real threat.

By contrast, Google is offering the Gmail interface, which continues to innovate. In fact, it continued to innovate this week, with this Gmail Chat thing, which is pretty darn slick.

Now, you could argue that Kahuna or whatever will be better than Gmail's interface, and maybe you're right, but have to realize that most people probably want Google to win. They may not be perfectly happy with Google, but to the average technologically literate user, Microsoft is literally "The tyranny of evil men".

Consider:

- You're a convicted monopolist, AND the same people who got you convicted for being a monopolist are still in charge!
- You indulge in coercive software development (e.g., "Want Halo 2? Then you have to buy Vista!"
- You've spent years improving the Windows security model -- but Vista has already had major security patches, and it's not even out yet!
- You heedlessly rushed into China, and indulged in crazy, not-even-required-the-government filtering, and then censored one dude's blog the whole world over. Not that you're as bad as Yahoo (to my knowledge, nobody has been sent to jail as a result of your business in China), but when I couldn't even make a blog with the word 'democracy' in the title, it looked *really* bad, and played to all our paranoid fantasies.
- Your CEO is an ogre who sweats too much
- Your OS and products are consistently buggy and half-assed.
- You whine when you products don't get coverage, and then level unfounded charges of bias against them. This makes you look like a confused medley of bully and whiny 7 year old.

I generally like your blog, Scoble, and I generally think that Microsoft is taking some good steps forward. However, your comments in this post indicate retrograde motion on the clue scale, and in particular you need to acknowledge that most people have plenty of legitimate reasons to not heap glowing praise on new Microsoft products.

People are so lame. Why do they settle on using hosted services that are totally generic????

Would I use some lamo 3rd tier generic service?

HELL FUCKING NO.

Yeah, the website I VISIT knows how to add a large service like email by pressing a button. They must be really trustworthy.

If you use a custom webmail system like phpmail, or socketmail or whatever where you can get the source code and customize it to be unique and work with your own server's sendmail, and pop/imap MTA's, you're keeping the database, which should rightfully be on your server, since they're using your website, and you're showing visitors that you're financed enough and professional enough to have a unique service and handle mail exchange for users.

People can tell when you take the no brainer route and alot of people don't like it.

They don't trust it. It's like trusting a website on geocities with money for pop ad software or some other internet commodity.

Thoughts on Google vs. your privacy:

http://searchscandals.blogspot.com/

retrograde motion on the clue scale

Great point. But I wouldn't assume there was ever a forward motion, just whomever pays the bills, and whomever can provide the limelight blog happy party life is where his flag will fly.

Have a bit of shame “Google love runs blind” bloggers. Ad sense effect I guess.

Google should be sued for its new google desktop.

Scoble - the reason I raised heck about it was precisly because it was Google doing it. Anyone else I wouldn't have a problem with. We all know it isn't new tech, MS have been doing it, Yahoo have been doing it etc.

I talk about it because it worries me more than if, say, Microsoft relaunched it tomorrow. In part this is because I see MS as much more open than I did 2 years ago, and much more so than Google. (blogging has certainly helped this lots!) Google's aquisition of people's data continue unabated and this worries me. That's why I raised it.

Your employment sidebar should add Lenova, OQO, Nokia, Motion and bunch of others then. Are you in on the Edgeio deal too? I think you denied FON, but maybe that should be "not yet FON." Forget to add Amazon.

Microsoft is not sexy, and has not been for some time now. This explains a lot.

Just took a look at live domains, and it is a valuable and free service that is available now. I'm going to move some domains to it and test. Note that it seems much more oriented to any end-user than Google's service. Obviously, Msft's "live" experiments - start.com etc. are very worth watching. But, comments that gmail is simply better web-based mail than hotmail are also correct, and Google's juice for this comes from that fact. People see gmail as a platform that at least partly belongs to them (viz. all the mash-ups), whereas they don't see Microsoft stuff in this way. Yet?

... and now a comment on the *important* stuff in this debate. You see, Scoble is *cool* but he works for an *uncool* company. This creates a huge psychic headache that can only be resolved by him making Microsoft cool. Do that, Robert! It's a hard task, sure. But you're up to it!

There is NO way Gmail is better than Windows Live Mail Beta, despite MSN's offering being limited to IE. I keep one IE window open for mail and SeaMonkey open for everything else.
I will say, however, that I thought IE7 was a dog despite it's beta status. The interface looks even worse than SeaMonkey or Firefox, and they look like worn out burros comapred to say, Opera or Safari.

http://www.horde.org/
http://www.squirrelmail.org/

Cpanel, ensim and plesk all use these for webmail for pop accounts for customer domain accounts for webhosting.

As for checking pop accounts on a webmail interface and not offering a public or private email service, free open source has beat microsoft AND google for YEARS now. YEARS .... YEEEAAAAARRRRRSSS.....

Why not talk about them, huh press?

Oh, there's no money in, it, you PILFERING GRABASSES!!!

Scoble:

I'm happy for you to complain about Google getting the credit, but next time BillG stands up and tells us all how in the next version of 'whatever' we're going to get this uber-new cool functionality that has actually existed in other systems for years, then by God I hope you complain about that too!

I'm so sick of reading these stories about MS adding stuff that has existed in Mac OS / Linux / UNIX for years and then telling us how innovative MS is!

Technically, if a blogger gets paid for an AdSense ad, put on his site by Google, but the "ad" itself is for a different company (say, for a book, such as Naked Conversations) then for those clicks, he is being paid by Authors or Publishers of that book. Google is just a commission agent and middle-man.

:-)

Microsoft suck!!!

Google is the best of the web....

The essential point, as I see it, is not a literal definition of what makes one an employee. It's an understanding that the possibility for cross-bias exists among AdSense users. Scoble's critics seem to be ignoring that very simple fact in favor of Nick Carr's ad hominem (Scoble is "Microsoft's kept blogger")and Paul Kedrosky's empty lauding of G-mail over Outlook for businesses. Not very impressive analysis, Paul.

In the above story you talk about accuracy in reporting (on slashdot of all places!!) - yet you divest the value of this google story in one fell swoop with some rather quaint language.

Google are giving a server based email solution that would make desktop outlook obsolete. Web outlook sucks (oh I dare you to argue otherwise!)

I think that warrants a rather impressive step back. From all the progress we have made we fail to realise, this will become the first real web application that will usurp a desktop one.

By that I mean we have all been using webmail, but the desktop component that remained in business email and domain based email that companies use can now be thrown out.

I expect huge numbers going for this integration because most webmail sucks, for what is a trivial application. (the 7 or 8 I have used).

Do you use outlook?

print: I use Outlook, Hotmail, and Gmail. I like Outlook the best -- by far.

>Your employment sidebar should add Lenova, OQO, Nokia, Motion and bunch of others then. Are you in on the Edgeio deal too?

Um, the machines and stuff from Lenova, OQO, Nokia, and Motion are loaners.

I am not getting a dime from Edgeio.

It could be as simple as talking about Google and linking the Google Blog brings traffic. Talking about Microsoft doesn't have nearly the same effect.

One word man, ugly advertisements (ok, that's two)... If I were going to have to suffer through a third-party email app, I'd much rather use GMail with its unobtrusive text ads than I would Hotmail with its god awful large and extremely risque adult dating and personals ads.

Maybe you should have a chat with the guys over at MSN and see what they can do to eliminate some of that crap. I know my boss wouldn't care if he walked by and saw me looking at GMail, but if he walked by and saw a half naked chick, he'd be a tad less understanding (even if it were just an ad in my webmail). You do the math...

It is not important for which come out first, the point is who is known by others.

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Apple 4 GB iPod Mini Silver M9160LL/A''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''us$50usd
Apple 60 GB iPod Photo M9830LL/A'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''us$90usd
Apple 60 GB iPod photo''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''us$50usd
Apple 30 GB iPod Photo M9829LL/A''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''us$75usd
Apple 512 MB iPod Shuffle MP3 Player
M9724LL/A'''''''''''''''''''''''us$56.00
Apple 4 GB iPod Mini Blue
M9436LL/A''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''us$49.00
Apple 20 GB iPod U2 Special
Edition'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''us$73.00
Apple 6 GB iPod Mini Green
M9807LL/A''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''us$64.00
NEW apple 60 GB video ipod'''''''''''''''''us$140.00
NEW apple 30 GB video ipod'''''''''''''''''us$120.00
ipoddealerltd@yahoo.com

Mp3 Player Price List
iRiver IFP-790T MP3 Player = $80usd
H10 6GB MP3 Player = $120usd
Sonic Impact Technologies 512MB MP3 Player w/ Flash Drive & Voice = $85usd
iriver H10 5GB MP3 Player, Gray = $110usd
YP-MT6X Yepp 512MB Portable Compact Digital Music MP3 Player = $70usd
Zen Micro 5 GB MP3 Player - Dark Blue [ Creative Labs = $100usd
iRiver 5 GB MP3 Player (Silver) = $110usd
Creative Labs NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra 30 GB MP3 Player = $90usd
Sony MZ-NH600D 1GB MP3 Player Hi-MD Walkman Digital Music Player = $90usd
Network Walkman NW-HD1 20GB MP3 Player = $150usd
Cowon iAudio X5 20GB MP3 Player = $110usd
Digital Audio Players from Motorola: Audio MP3 Players, Digital = $70usd
Gigabeat Meg-F60S 60GB MP3 Player - Gray = $155usd
Sony 1GB Personal MP3 Player, Network Walkman = $100usd
Creative Zen Micro 6GB MP3 Player (red) = $125usd
ipoddealerltd@yahoo.com

When I go to the grocery store, Safeway becomes my employee when I place my bottle of jack on the conveyor belt, or right as the attendant takes my food stamps? Please clarify, because I am totally confused as to the exact moment Safeway becomes my employee. I need to know, it's been holding up my tax filings this year. :(

I guess Microsoft just don't get in the press unless it's about a new OS/Office; whereas Google seem to be everybody's favorite company right now.

It is just the fact that Microsoft is a bully and happens to release flawed products - where as Google seams to be on the forefront of cool ideas. That's why Google and Mac are starting to have a good relationship. Speaking of Mac - love the new ad about Window's Vista!