Tailoring the Web for profit

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Monday, June 15, 1998, page B7

By Bruce Umbaugh

Should consumers root for Uncle Sam and his allies in their antitrust suits against Microsoft? Or are Uncle Sam and company just a bunch of nags trying to stop Microsoft from exercising good business sense and technological innovation?

I will tell you flatly: I don't know.

But I don't think it matters especially. While the government is focused on one set of Microsoft activities, related to its Internet Explorer browser, I'm focused on another set of activities, related to something I think is a lot more important. I'm watching television.

Last year, Microsoft bought a new technology called WebTV. This product marries your television set to the World Wide Web, so while working on your computer, you can access the Cardinals game, live, on your monitor. Alternatively, while watching the Cardinals on TV, you can click on an icon on your screen and call up things such as player statistics or the team's schedule.

According to the company propaganda, this product "gives viewers a greater level of interaction with their televisions." It is another example of Microsoft's leadership and innovation (even though Microsoft didn't develop WebTV, it only bought it). It is a world beater.

All of this may be true. But that doesn't make it good. In fact, WebTV is evil.

That's because WebTV doesn't show you the whole Web. You might want to find out how Mark McGwire's slugging percentage in May compared with Babe Ruth's in his best months ever, but you won't find it unless some sponsor has paid Microsoft for the privilege of bringing it to you. So more likely, you'll be restricted to basic sites that give you the things sponsors want you to know: the Cardinals' schedule, Southwest Airlines' schedule, the history of Budweiser.

In other words, there's a little Bill Gates inside your tube requiring a toll from others to steer you to their Web site. So your access is restricted. And you may even have to watch a commercial for Budweiser before you can get at the Cardinals' batting averages.

Similarly, if you are watching through your computer, WebTV presents as options only the few sites or channels that have paid Microsoft for the privilege. So you may get the Cardinals but not the Angels. Or, more troubling, the Angels but not the Cardinals.

That's one set of problems. Your "downstream" choices - whether through your TV or your computer - are more limited than they are now when you just sit down at the computer and start surfing.

Problem two is your "upstream" choices - your ability to communicate back through your TV/computer. Currently, your ability to communicate upstream is unlimited. You can set up a home page and tell the world whatever you want. And the whole world can reply directly to you.

This makes the Web the most democratic communications medium ever, as the U.S. Court of Appeals noted in its 1996 ruling on the Communications Decency Act. The Web is a many-to-many medium, with extremely low barriers to entry.

But democracy does not guarantee profits, and that's been part of the problem with the Web for corporate America. Profits roll in when you can start controlling things. And that's why WebTV really is a world-beater, at least for Microsoft.

Through WebTV, the many-to-many communications character of the Web is lost, in favor of a broadcasting, one-to-many model. The Web comes under the centralized control of a company that programs what you see, whether that be Web sites or TV channels. It permits you to respond only in limited ways that are of interest to the sponsors paying the freight.

The primary way is by saying, "Show me this" and "I'll buy that." WebTV upstream communications is chiefly responding to home shopping opportunities.

So people who used to be able to communicate with the whole world through their personal computers will now hook into WebTV and find they can order products from certain companies. And that's about it.

For Microsoft, it's a brilliant answer to two problems: how to commercialize the Web, and how to deal with the possibility that people will get tired of buying new innovations, such as Windows 98, for their operating systems. Through WebTV, Microsoft pulls out of its hat a rabbit in a mink coat. It gets to put its hands around the long green of TV and Hollywood money. Bill Gates, meet Oprah.

Assuming all this is allowed to happen, it's not to say that the Web won't still be there. It will, and people will still be able to use it. But the concern is that people will be much less inclined to pay for and use the Web once they have access to simple, easy-to-use WebTV, coming right at them through their televisions or their personal computers.

And who is to protest? Certainly not the computer manufacturers: They don't make any money off the Web anyway, and Microsoft is offering them a subsidy - a discount on the license to install Windows 98 if they also install the equipment for WebTV. Certainly not the television and movie industries: It's another medium through which they can reach you.

So it's up to consumers like us, and the government that represents us. It's up to us to prevent what has been history's most democratic medium from being trivialized and demeaned. It's up to us to keep the Web from going down the same path as TV itself.


Copyright 1998, Bruce Umbaugh
Copyright (c) 1998, St. Louis Post-Dispatch