>And what about the consumer? How many will put their sensitive data into "the clouds" on a Microsoft web server (or anyone elses) only to have it held hostage while escalating 'license fees' and 'per-use fees' are extracted from them. The only ones with free access to ANYONES data will be the Russian hackers who already own microsoft.com.
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>The NYT has an article about a coder who was working with MS on SOAP, but near the end of his collaberation he noticed that MS snuck into the code limitations that restricted optimum use of SOAP to those who use MS tools only. He vented his spleen on NYT, and on his webpage, DaveNet. Microsoft is doing its best to gain total control of the internet and, in effect, make it propriatary property. Embrace, and then if you can't Extend, then Extinquish.

I agree, and this makes me very nervous. MS is disguising their intent by using open standards such as XML and SOAP. Right now, you have to use MS Office in order to exchange documents with anyone. Imagine a world where you have to pay MS in order to exchange any type of information between businesses. Hopefully, larger corporations will insist that B2B exchanges are compatible between vendors' systems. I think this is a real possibility with UDDI, BizTalk, and such. It remains to be seen if MS will try to compete on the merit of their products, or attempt to monopolize yet another market.