Shoutbox

quote:

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Originally posted by andrewdodd13
I don't really understand why Microsoft are so up tight about it, but it's their choice, and it should be respect.

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If I would be developing a product that is really important in this business sector (yes, it is all about business), I too would be upset about having confidential information being published preliminarily. It would exactly mean that I cannot trust someone of my testers group, which is equal to having a security problem within the company. Any company having someone inside who spreads non-disclosable information (does not even have to do with Web and virtual goods, also refers to industrial companies, such as car manufacturers) - any company with such a person would do their best to find that person and he would have been employee for them for the longest time. Depending on the importance of the spread (leaked) information, they would even consider taking him into court as it is a (rather smaller or bigger) loss for the company to have information under development already available to the end consumers. This can even strike through marketing strategies with big investments, and force the company to start to work again on areas that would have been ready to be released when the other areas were finished, in order to recreate a new invention not already known by the public.

So, this all is basically about a product to be placed on a market with rather big competition. Windows Live Messenger is not the only or the best IM product, but there are ICQ, AIM, and whatever their names are, alongside with those multi-protocol messenger clients and web-based clients (which, by the way, are not authorized by Microsoft and thus abusing their protocol that they reverse-engineered, which, I am sure, is forbidden by the Microsoft Windows Live Terms of Use). So, in order to be able to survive on the IM client/IM network market, Microsoft and the Windows Live Development Team need to create really good (and most important, fresh- and new-looking) software, and therefore it is a rather big beat into the face for them to have the public know their new design before they actually finish it.