An Open Letter to Microsoft

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Dear Microsoft,

I realize you're in a bit of a panic because Google hit y'all over the head with a virtual tennis racquet and popped all the strings and it made a big 'Boooinng!' noise and now the racquet is like around your neck and stuff and you're trying to figure out how to get it off and still look cool. Yeah, it's probably disturbing that nobody seems to really care about Vista and that the Mac ads make you look like tools and the XBox is starting to look more and more like a high flying Magnavox Odyssey (that overheats or something? bonus!)

Gmail, youtube, all that crap zoomed right past y'all as you were standing in a pool of stagnant code trying to figure out how to 'redesign' your everything. (Soapbox? Zume? What?) Even old coot AOL has a more impressive presence online! Now there's rumors that you're looking to buy Yahoo! (they should change that famous exclamation point to a question mark at this point) but I can't figure out why that could possibly be a good idea. I mean why not buy Lycos and save yourself some money? You could probably pick up that place for a couple hundred grand and half-pallet of refurbed flatscreens at this point.

You might be wondering at this point what you did to deserve this on a Monday morning? You're just a little old company trying mind its own business. Right? Why do I insist on kicking you in the ribs when you're busy lacing up your fancy new shoes (with flashing lights and a new heel design!) insisting you're about to make a sprint run at capturing the new frontier? (What are you going to 'own' this time? Video phone with IM? Did I guess right? (cough) You want to own that? It's all yours...)

The REASON why I am so pissed at you is one word and one word only. That word is "Word".

Here's the dealio. My parents and a friend of mine both recently got a new computers-- and they're both super annoyed that it doesn't just come with a full-version Microsoft Word installed. For free. You've decided to only offer a 30-day trial version with new computers. You've probably been charging for Word in one way or another all these years-- but now you've stupidly made it all obvious that you're charging for it. Now people have to BUY it as an individual program! Regular people who EXPECT it to just be free! What are you charging for it too? $100? $200? Are you crazy!?!?

Dudes, it's time you started GIVING AWAY STUPID WORD!!! First off it half-sucks anyway so don't go acting like it's all valuable-- but this is exactly why you're having big problems! This is why people don't like you! People are now used to gifts from big companies now! Google is giving away stuff like everyday (not that I don't have issues with them too) But seriously? Don't you think it's time you made the hugely generous step not to rip a couple hundred dollars out of PC owners hands like a bunch of mafia goons for your friggin precious Word! Start showing you care a little and not desperate to find new revenue! Or at the very least show that there's someone in that backroom of yours thinking about stuff! You know, that backroom where you're drawing up an attack plans to "take back the internet".... probably by charging people $24.95 for the honor to let you do so?

Get your stuff together stupids! Time is ticking! (Are you going to charge for the little clock in the corner soon too?) FU!

ok bye! dicks!

tOdd