Here's what I predict:
1) Amazon's new Flexible Payments Service (FPS) will do insanely well with developers and smaller businesses. And Amazon will make bank with it. (It's a great idea - Amazon has effectively built themselves up large enough to become a 'bank' and now they can simultaneously watch out for the 'little-guy' (who is sick of getting gouged to death with absurdly high transaction fees) while making a bunch of quick-nickels themselves.)
2) Microsoft will notice Amazon's success, pull a bunch of developers off of projects that currently make money and which many of us actually give a crap about, and then stuff them into a highly-caffeinated environment in order to create Windows Live Payment Services as a way to cash-in on Amazon's great idea.
Only, like every other hair-brained catch-up project that MS has invested time, energy, and talent into over the past few years... it will end up being "too little, too late".
Oh sure, they may even get it to the point where it makes money (after the third iteration or so). But like Windows Live Search, Zune, and Virtual Earth... it will just be a shadow of what the competition has created, and will really only ever amount to some sort of 'flattery' of an original idea - without ever really ever becoming a real-life competitor.
Innovation Anyone?
Call me crazy, but I'd love to see a return to innovation over at Microsoft (and no, a $10k coffee table that weighs as much as a small-car doesn't really count). And for sure, there are people and even groups at Microsoft that can innovate - it's just that I worry they're too frequently sucked from something with real potential in order to work on some stupid catch-up project that will be branded with the stupid "Live" moniker.
Honestly, I can't wait for the "Live" marketing push (and all the 'quick... let's build something just like that so we don't look stupid' rationale going on behind it) to die.
So yeah, I'm waiting for "Live" to die.
I second that!
Posted by: JT | August 09, 2007 at 01:09 PM