By Richard Morochove
First published June 24, 1999
Don't look now, but your eyeballs are for sale. Computer software and hardware makers want to control what you see and make some money from it. The few square centimeters occupied by your computer's display are turning out to be the world's most valuable real estate.
We're prepared for advertising when we turn on a TV or radio or flip open a newspaper or magazine. In most cases, it's easy to distinguish the ads from the regular programming or editorial content. We can then use a critical eye to judge the value of the information presented.
In the world of computer advertising, the rules are still being written. There's often a blurry line between marketing materials and valuable information or software.
You're assaulted by advertising messages each time you turn on your PC, whether you know it or not. And the situation is likely to get worse in the future as more companies figure out how they can cash in on your computer usage.
Computer makers have bundled bonus applications software with new PCs for years. Usually, these programs were provided by developers for next to nothing. They figured they'd make money in support charges and future upgrade fees from new users enticed to adopt their program.
Then Microsoft got into the act, usurping the role of the PC makers, and turned this practice into big business. The Redmond-based developer recognized the great value of the computer display in marketing to new computer users. It's been selling space on its Windows desktop for years.
Do you wonder how an AOL icon made it onto your screen when the access software isn't developed by Microsoft and you aren't a subscriber to the online service? Microsoft sold the real estate occupied by the software icon to AOL. Then Microsoft forced PC makers to load the AOL desktop icon and the access software unto the hard drives of new computers, as a condition of receiving Windows.
That's one reason behind the ongoing legal troubles the software giant is experiencing in Washington, D.C. Microsoft forbid computer makers to replace the icon of its Internet Explorer web browsing software with similar software developed by its rival Netscape Communications.
Earlier this week at Microsoft's anti-trust trial, Microsoft witness Richard Schmalensee, dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, compared computer makers to distributors who sell automobiles. Schmalensee said that if a Cadillac dealer were to change the engine or the Cadillac name on the cars he sells, it would weaken the brand.
Of course, Schmalensee didn't mention that Microsoft controls some 90 per cent of the desktop PC operating system market, while Cadillac accounts for a small fraction of the auto market. Any major computer maker that didn't strike a deal with Microsoft to offer Windows on its computers couldn't survive, while there are plenty of car dealers who prosper without selling a single Cadillac.
His analogy doesn't address the way Microsoft strikes deals with software makers to include promotions with Windows such as AOL's online access software or limited versions of other company's programs, aimed at encouraging users to pay money to upgrade to the full versions.
This isn't a case of replacing a Microsoft engine. It's more like sticking another bumper sticker over the one Microsoft plastered on your PC.
But now another company is looking to upstage Microsoft's neat little marketing deals with something that will interrupt the Windows setup process with its own offers.
A subsidiary of Phoenix Technologies, whose BIOS (Basic Input Output System) software runs most of the world's PCs, is coming out with a technology that would reach you the first time you turn on your computer.
The key software, called eBetween, is contained in a chip plugged into your PC. Before your Windows desktop loads, eBetween will ask if you'd like to take advantage of some services. If you agree, several icons will be added to your Windows desktop, to promote Internet service providers and other commercial deals. The eBetween chip will be included in some PCs starting this fall.
I can just imagine the howls from Microsoft, outraged that someone else's bumper sticker icons can be plastered beside its own Windows desktop bumper stickers before Windows even loads for the first time.
While I can't say I'm thrilled at this latest advertising incursion into PCs, at least eBetween asks if you want the advertising icons, unlike Microsoft which sticks them in your face whether you like it or not.
The eBetween approach might even encourage Microsoft to take a more enlightened approach to its own marketing deals. I'd like to see Windows ask if you really want those marketing icons cluttering up your desktop. If you don't, then it should remove them and the related software. You'll regain that hard disk capacity you bought and paid for, occupied by software you neither want nor use. CW
Richard Morochove, FCA, is a Toronto-based computer consultant.
Copyright ©1999 by Morochove & Associates Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be copied or distributed by any means without our prior written permission.
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