Microsoft keeps their lawyer busy pushing Anti-Piracy laws

I subscribe to infopackets a free newsletter that covers daily tech news. When it comes into my email I give it a scan and click on the articles that interest me. Today I click on and read an article entitled Microsoft Lobbies for US Anti-Piracy Law and kind of feel slimed.

Microsoft has made a lot of money over the years playing hardball, squashing competitors any way it can. And using laws and litigation is one of the tools in their toolbox. I can understand that they don’t want people pirating their software but I think their whole push to punish companies that are found to have pirated versions of their software is wrong headed. They need to abandon this way of doing business and here is why I think that.

The old model of paying huge sums of money up front for a software product is out of date. Charging hundreds and thousands of dollars for most software packages isn’t the best way for a software company to be very successful anymore. Not only does that model not work in places like China because of cultural norms, it’s not going to grow your software business in the U.S. Instead of trying to punish companies that use pirated software they should change their business model  so there would be no need to pirate their software.

 

The new and better model is to give away your software, that’s right, give it away. At least give away a basic version that works for most people. People download in mass or use online, test it out, and see if it is going to fit their needs. A percentage of those people are going to want to pay for tech support, customisation, and extra features. They will have no problem doing this because they have already bought into the software package. This model has been proven to work and you can see it at work at Google. It will provide more business than the old model.

At Google MBAs take a backseat to the creative folks, the top priority is to make products that are useful, fun, and that people are going to want. They then give them away. Not all of their products make money directly but they add to the Google brand. Google makes a ton of cash with their advertising machine but they also make money with extra services to their free software. 

Many other software companies give away basic services and charge for the benefit of having support and extra storage space etc. It’s a model that works today. Skype gives free computer to computer communicating; and if you want to talk to real phones they have a nominal monthly fee. Amazon is giving away cloud storage; if you want extra then you pay a fee. Google gives away storage space for pictures, if you want a lot of space then there is a charge. Google gives away gmail, but you can pay a little for a domain for your company and get support. So you think anyone would pay Google anything for email if they didn’t give it away first? Not likely. All of these examples let customers try the service and provides instant market share to the company.

I understand that Microsoft has a lot invested in the way things have been done in the past, but I really wish they would go with the flow and join the 21^st century. It would give lawyers other things to do and make us feel a lot less icky using their products.

Dan