chamblog

Microsoft are going to charge users $1.50 (£0.80) to download the 2nd beta of Office 2007.  Now, correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t these beta testers helping Microsoft?  Aren’t we saving them thousands of dollars by testing it for free?  Sure, the demand for the beta may be higher than they expected (and lets face it, demand was always gonna be high) and that may have cost them a bit, but they can afford it!  Its not like Microsoft are a small startup struggling to make ends meet, they are one of the wealthiest (if not the wealthiest) companies in the world and surely they can afford to carry the cost of the bandwidth to serve these betas.  If not, why didnt they set a limit (as they have done previously) and simply stop after it was reached?

OK, lets do the maths – if they serve an extra 100,000 downloads at $1.50 each, thats $150,000 in revenue before the software even hits the shops.  I can see why that looks attractive to Microsoft – it helps pays for the constant delays to release dates that they keep fobbing us off with.  But the repercussions of this could be far wider.  With Microsoft making money from betas (lets face it, they might release another couple of Office betas before it hits the shelves), the drive to finish the software quickly diminishes (although you could argue Microsoft products wouldn’t be any worse off with a couple more testing cycles).  Also, will other software companies (especially larger ones) follow suit if they know they can get away with it?