CogBlog

Microsoft provided a look at their new web-services strategy yesterday. Their online offerings will be used independently and in conjunction with their traditional offerings. The first products will be Windows Live, and Office Live. Each will extend and enhance their offline counterpart software.

Web-based services is not a new concept, but I'm sure the Microsoft announcement will have many people thinking much more seriously about it. You can see some of the products that will be offered through Windows Live here:

http://ideas.live.com

A lot of the initial offerings are just re-named existing products like search, and chat. I'd imagine that there may be more interesting tools in the Office Live set.

The thing that is great about web-services is that it provides a platform for independent developers to create things that are often more interesting than the original product. There is web-based software, where a complete application is provided for you, and then there are web-services where a framework is created that allows you a lot of flexibility with how you use the product, and ultimately even what the application will do and how it will be used.

For example, Google AdWords is basically web-based software that allows you to create and manage your online sponsored search campaigns. It is a very good application, and I think the best management interface of all the sponsored search properties. But, it doesn't do everything, so they offer the Google APIs that allow you to build your own application. API stands for Application Programming Interface and basically sets rules that say "if you send us x in just this certain way, we'll send back y". This will allow you to incorporate all the power of their system into a format and structure that you define.

It is all incredibly powerful, and more and more companies offer this kind of service. But, the service provider has to be willing to give up a certain amount of control, and I wonder if Microsoft is likely to succeed in this way.