[IxDA Discuss] Microsoft to license Office 2007 UI system

[Jared M. Spool]

On Dec 1, 2006, at 10:48 AM, pauric wrote:

> Say I'm MS. Say I've got word.live free with advertising and  
> wordpro.live in
> a pay per use model.  To me it doesnt really matter where the money is
> coming from, I have a version that users dont like, but which is  
> advertiser
> supported (shoot the monkey re-fi loan ad money will always be on  
> the table)
> ,and I have a version that they do like and will pay for.  Both  
> models have
> been shown to work very well: gmail & basecamp.  I, as MS, dont  
> really care
> where the dollars are coming from.  Consider advertising as 'reduced
> functionality' in terms of a poorer UX, with users given the option to
> unlock the app, something like a shareware model.  That said, your  
> views in
> that blog post hold some water, this model failed for Opera.

I understand how it could work. Only  it hasn't worked that way in  
any major form, yet. Maybe there's a reason for it.

It's not clear gmail's advertisers get any value -- enough to cover  
the costs of maintaining the ads. Google has the benefit that they  
pitch a low rate market to a lot of suckers (people not capable of  
doing a cost benefit analysis). But if no user ever clicks on any of  
those ads, the effort is not worth it. (And google eventually boots  
the ads out of the system.) Maybe this explains why Google hasn't  
extended their ad-sense products into the Docs & Spreadsheets products.

And maintaining an ad network is expensive. And maintaining ads on  
multiple networks is expensive. The ad-network market would be ripe  
for consolidation, but that all introduces a problem with control  
over ad display. Do you want your ads on a porn site?

So, I think this is problematic, at best. I think it's a short-term  
phenomena and, at some point in the future, we'll see these types of  
models vanish. More accountability is on the way for advertising  
networks and, when it appears, the advertisers will realize that most  
of their money is a waste.

>
> To your second point on someone stealing my IU ideas.  I do not  
> think that
> MS cannot stop someone copying the concept of ribbons or minibars,  
> what they
> can try to do is somehow exclude that app from too much exposure, I  
> havent
> figured out how exactly... my latest half baked conspiracy theory  
> is an MS
> certified app marketplace.  But back to your point as I understand  
> it.  The
> products I work on regularly get commoditised and the only  
> differentiation
> we can do is on the UI (
> http://www.3com.com/en_US/jump_page/unified_switch.html )  No  
> matter how
> many agreements and contracts we sign with vendors there is little  
> we can do
> to stop shops in China 'learning' from my designs.  And frankly, I  
> welcome
> the challenge.  The end result is a better UI.

We'll see how much you'll like the better UI if you end up losing  
your job because customers buy from the cheaper developer. That's why  
IP protection was put into place.

If you don't think IP protection is a good idea, don't protect your  
IP. Nobody is forcing you to protect it.

But I see no reason to complain when others choose to protect their  
hard work. It's their right and the market will bear the truth in  
what is going on.

(I do think that IP protections should be limited in scope and time  
and that the current system needs rethinking on those measures. But I  
wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.)

>
> Take your position to the extreme.  Every interface is some one's
> intellectual property. The web would grind to a painful halt and  
> we'd all be
> out of a job.  There certainly wouldn't be any interface design - 
> discussion-
> list


Or maybe it would get more innovation and less me-too copying. Which  
was its purpose in the first place.

IP Protection should come with a cost. Either something you're  
building is worth protecting or it is not. For most web design, it's  
not worth protecting, so you wouldn't invest in the protection costs.  
(The underlying content probably is worth protecting, which is why we  
have different types of protection: patents, copyrights, design  
patents, trade secrets, and others).

Jared