Random thoughts and observations on the latest Microsoft initiative, Microsoft .NET:

• The Microsoft .NET web site is not actually found at www.microsoft.net. The name is really stupid as well, but at least it’s not another contrived acronym. (DNA, anyone?)
• Some vision of the future this is. People have been talking about everything Microsoft has announced for years. Pervasive network connectivity to all devices? Accessing all of your applications through one window? Building applications out of dynamic, downloadable components? These are all other people’s ideas.
• Vaporware? Of course. Microsoft says they’re at least two years away from delivering on any of this. They’re just telling you about it so that you don’t use anyone else’s products if they release them first.
• Microsoft is trying to cut off the air supply for the burgeoning gang of ASPs by announcing their own ASP called bCentral.net.
• Optimists see this as a sign of a new openness from Microsft, an acknowledgement that they don’t rule the Internet. I don’t think I’m buying that. I mean, how do people even know that given that any software based on this initiative is two years out?
• Microsoft’s utter humiliation of its former competitors continues apace. First, Steve Jobs kissed the ring before the crowd at a MacWorld conference a few years ago. Now we see Marc Andreessen swearing fealty to Gates at this announcement. I wonder if we’ll ever see Scott McNeally or Larry Ellison kneeling before the Microsoft throne?