One of the software giant’s top executives says his company is frustrated by the slow adoption of consumer-oriented Web services, once heralded as the future of online commerce.
Web Services Frustrates Microsoft
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
what did they expect really? that people would come rushing for this?
adoption of such things takes time. period.
microsoft of all companies has the time to wait.. so they should stop acting like babies.
I find this interesting from the perspective that the company (Microsoft) was hoping that others would adopt this web service. Strange… wouldn’t a company as large as Microsoft take polls or ask customers what they thought they would do in the near future instead of guessing? They should try to see into the future for people, but sheesh, get frustrated at slow adoption? They have the cash to take polls and do research…
They’re telling their customers what they want. They’ve been doing this for a while – I think it’s corporate culture at this point.
The two best web services applications I’ve seen, Watson and Sherlock 3, are both for OS X
Come on… Just an hours worth of browsing the web should tell anyone these facts (Economy’s tight; People aren’t willing to pay for extra services without proven value; People feel that MS isn’t trustworthy or secure, etc.).
Must be MS’s key decision makers have been living in a closet on a remote mountain somewhere for the last couple of years.
This article really spells out the fact that MS is not aware of their public image. For them to hedge this whole .Net movement on the assumption that people would be willing to pay for it was just stupid, and I for one am hoping they lose a ton of money and investors based on this.
What kind of business plan is that? Build it and they’ll come… Why??
Stupid MS… I almost wish that someone would come up with some totally tragic Windows exploit that would finally act as a push for people to adopt a new OS.
Would MS disappear? Not likely, but I would love to see them pushed back to being a simple software developer, rather than this “We know what you need whether you do or not” behemoth that they’ve become.
Idiots…
You do not know what “web services” with the modern notion of the word means then. I have talked about it in the past.
When Ms, IBM and Sun talk about “web services”, they mean the XML and other tools to extract infromation via a predefined, universal API that always works and it is supported by BOTH sides (both the web sites and the application).
Neither Sherlock or Watson are part of this kind of “web services”. They have just hacked around the web sites that leach information from, and they parse their HTML by hand. This is NOT “web services”. This is leaching. And each time these web sites are changing a bit their HTML, their code breaks. As in the current situation with the FEDEX plugin on Watson…
Neither Sherlock or Watson are part of this kind of “web services”. They have just hacked around the web sites that leach information from, and they parse their HTML by hand.
Well, this definately isn’t the case with Sherlock, which is definately using XML-driven using SOAP services. It’s rather apparent that Apple has contracted with various groups for their content from all the branding.
At any rate, you can check for yourself to see Sherlock is processing XML. POST the following to w4.systranlinks.com:
id=sherlock&charset=utf-8&api=1&lp=en_de&text=test
You’ll see this returns XML with the translated text.
I only know for certain this is the case with Systran’s translation service, but I think it’s safe to assume since they’ve obviously contracted with the other companies that it is the case there as well.
Neither Sherlock or Watson are part of this kind of “web services”. They have just hacked around the web sites that leach information from, and they parse their HTML by hand. This is NOT “web services”. This is leaching. And each time these web sites are changing a bit their HTML, their code breaks. As in the current situation with the FEDEX plugin on Watson…
You’re right.
The problem is that there are very few (that I’m aware of) client applications to take advantage of web services. If FEDEX would open up a stable XML version of the service that Sherlock could use, rather than have to parse the HTML to provide that interface, then both Sherlock users and FEDEX would be happy.
FEDEX would save bandwidth, Sherlock users would see stability.
But the problem with web services is that everyone right now has this swell universal client that seems to work called the web browser.
I’ve never used Sherlock or Watson. But I have on my PCs home page, for example, a little Google search box hacked from their page, a little Yahoo search box, and a little Dictionary search box. If I tracked a lot of FEDEX boxes, I could easily hack in a FEDEX search box.
Of course, these are trvial examples. Probably the other more sophisticated examples are the RSS clients. Then, there are the “extremely popular” web services known and Gnutella et al.
But for most consumers, the closest they come to a web service is the shortcut/Favorites menu. If I can have a shortcut to a page with local movie times, what the heck do I need a seperate client to reformat and redisplay that information? Click *Movie*, Bang! Movie times, with my zip code and everything! WOW!
The basic issue is that most consumers simply don’t need sophisticated web services, consumers don’t need much automation to get what they want out of the web.
Web services are a waste of time really … Microsoft should be concentrating on making a decent OS first before trying to do new things. Besides, the industry has a real hatred for MS at the moment, due to their pricing and treatment of developers.
Now there is an idea!
Explain to me why this Web Services hype job is any different than the ‘extras’ that a car salesman tries to get customers to buy. ‘NO thanks, I really don’t need the $200 undercoating’ ‘Yes you do’ ‘NO I don’t ‘ ‘Yes You Do, trust me’ Which really is fine with me. I mean there’s a sucker born every minute right and surely someone is willing to pay extra for little services. What if AOL changed there interface client to XML? Would that qualify? Is email a web service? What about the shopping cart on many web sites? Search engines? Bulletin Boards?
Did they go out and ask customers what kind of things that maybe in their wildest dreams what would be cool? What else do people need to be able to do on the Net? Words that will come back to haunt me I am sure but it seems to me that the whole Web Services idea revolves around getting everyone on the web tied to ONE centralized identity verification source. Call me crazy but I will never trust my personal information in such a comprehensive database. Imagine how much entertainment such a database would provide for crackers.
This is one eskimo that does not need an ice machine.
Web services… for all that they sound cool… just arent that interesting for many people
if you have a need that they happen to fill.. great! they might just be worth adapting new technologies…
however refocusing your development tools to where they are the main thing? just doesnt make sense
take game development.. even ultima online/everquest/insert name of whatevers current here
WHY would someone creating these types of things need visual studio .net or such?
os development… dont think the latest whiz-bang open/free/source code on a stick kernel needs to grab data from a server someplace
they should keep them where they belong… in an sdk…
(and this is coming from someone who is actually a fan of the .net tools)
“They’re telling their customers what they want. They’ve been doing this for a while – I think it’s corporate culture at this point.”
Exactly. Gates even said in an interview with an Aussie IT mag that users DONT know what they want, Microsoft does (I’ll try to find and post the article up here if its online).
corperations can use them to make acessing data and integrating systems easier for the end user. rather than have lots of diffrent interfaces for aplications, you can just have the applications output XML data and then have that put out as a service for workers in a nice looking interface.
this can be done now with IE and javascript/VB, however, with .NET framwork, it become infinatly easier. then add in a nice site based passport system to log all the workers into each program when they log into the machine in the morning, and you have just reduced your need for tech suport by 50% based soley on the more streem lined aproach to data access.
We can read Microsoft’s web page if we want answers designed by the Marketing department to get management all excited. ‘Oooh isn’t it going to be wonderful’ ‘We will be able to access Information and at half the TCO’ ‘Oooohi’ And I guess it would be nice to distinguish the things that benefit a user from the things that benefit the developer.
Sounds like Mr. Gates has caught Einsteinitis(not in dictionary) which I will describe as something similar to Einstein’s ‘unified field theory’. As in 1 Program to rule them all. 1 Program to bind them. The ability to access information from any digital device anywhere, anytime. And it all sounds wonderful. So now the user just needs one user-name and one password to access information from any and all digital devices. Just one. That sounds great.
And for the developers. .NET means you now have the ability to Drag-n-Drop a program up in a matter of minutes. Everything going on behind the scenes with .NET VS taking care of everything.
–
Here are some services offered. ONline calendering, contact list management, document and image storage, credit card info, personal identification data, Extra-Sensory-Perception. Sorry I couldn’t help myself. ESP is not on the list. Point is there isn’t anything new here. Except for the ‘unified field theory'(sorry albertE) aspect it’s no wonder adoption has been slow. Besides the fact that NO software company has proven that they can be trusted to write software that will protect me from a truly determined cracker, what’s the point? And save the marketing blabber. If I wanted that I could just reread everything Allchin said.