Microsoft learning how to play the game?

ot everybody in the world uses Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. This has always bothered Microsoft, and the company has done as much as it could to force people to use IE. So one of the minor changes in the makeover of Office Live Small Business actually may signal a major move toward reality-based thinking in Redmond: this useful service will now support Firefox.

Microsoft's insistence on requiring IE for access or downloads has not always made it popular, which is understandable, but it has also not always made Microsoft competitive, which is puzzling, because Microsoft is nothing if it's not competitive.

Some people don't use IE because they can't -- there are no IE versions for Mac and Linux, for instance. Some don't use it because they don't want to. They like Firefox or Opera or something else better. But Microsoft continues to set up access and download restrictions that require IE.

Sometimes this is merely annoying, as when you try to use Windows Home Server's remote access feature to connect across the Internet to your home PC, only to find that you are required to use IE and download ActiveX controls to do it. (The issue of ActiveX has come up yet again, by the way, with security experts again calling on Microsoft to kill ActiveX.)

Sometimes, however, Microsoft's insistence on having its own way keeps you from using a Microsoft product that could be useful. Office Live Small Business has always looked like one of those. And Microsoft's insistence that OLSM could only be used in IE seemed like a bullet aimed accurately at its own foot: if your goal is to build relationships with customers, why would you insist on setting conditions that prevent them from becoming customers?

Microsoft's Web-based business continues to lag behind Google and Yahoo!, and maybe Microsoft is finally beginning to figure out why: "Web services" are called that for a reason -- because they provide a service. On the user's terms. The successful service providers, like Google and Yahoo!, don't insist that you use a particular browser. They just work.

The genius of Google, in particular, has always emphasized doing cool things on the Web because it can, and rather than because it can make a profit. You'd think that would make it completely safe from Microsoft, which has lately seemed dedicated to profit first, cool later.

But if Microsoft is actually going to change its spots, to do things because they meet customer needs rather than just because they increase Microsoft's grasp on customer's wallets -- if Microsoft is going to let you use Firefox just because you like it better than IE, then, golly, even Google may not be safe.