The Microsoft standard is anything but
I didn't know that MSN users were forced to use Exchange. Does any other ISP force their customers to use a certain mail program? It sounds like another case of tying, if you asked me. I expect nothing less from Microsoft anymore.
[link|http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010716/tc/the_microsoft_standard_is_anything_but_1.html|
The Microsoft standard is anything but]
By Henry Kingman, Enterprise
If you work in an office in the United States in 2001, Microsoft products are almost certainly standard issue. That doesn't make them true standards, however, despite the fact that Microsoft does everything it can to set, rather than follow, standards. Arguably, Microsoft's control over standards sets it up to both dominate and, one day, to fall.
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For its part, Microsoft requires all of its dial-up MSN Internet services customers to use Outlook. There may be some feature-ish justification for this, such as improved SPAM filtering. But from some angles enforcing email client choice through an ISP doesn't smell too different than enforcing default Web browser choice through an operating system. It's the same kind of hi-jinx that ran Microsoft afoul of the Sherman Act and its interdictions against anti-competitive corporate behavior. After all, every other email provider on earth abides by the standards--why can't Microsoft?
