Can We Trust Microsoft as a Content Provider? (Premium)

Today, you can buy music, movies and TV shows from the Windows Store, and Microsoft is adding e-books this year. But is Microsoft a trustworthy content provider?

This is perhaps a more complex question than is immediately obvious.

Consider the news this week that Microsoft is finally bringing e-books to Windows Store with the Windows 10 Creators Update. The feedback I’ve seen in the article comments and on Twitter falls into three main buckets:

• Absolutely not. I would never trust Microsoft with any form of paid content
• All for it. Finally! I’ve been waiting for Microsoft to do this
• Pragmatic. Microsoft needs to do this because there are no high-quality content stores available for the Windows 10/Windows Store/UWP platform

Each of these opinions seems to make sense on the surface, given Microsoft’s history and our collective experiences with the company’s services. There are some fringe elements in each case too, the most obvious (and saddest) being those who perceive this as some kind of good news for phone. But overall, there’s a nuanced conversation to be had.

The detractors perhaps have the strongest position.

After all, Microsoft has a rich, multi-decade history of starting up content stores of various kinds and then winding them down unceremoniously without warning. We’ve been burned many times, from music initiatives like Windows Media, Plays for Sure, and Zune to the Microsoft Reader e-book efforts that many now forget.

Too, Microsoft has never had a cohesive or consistent consumer strategy. The theory here, from what I can see, has always been that people need Microsoft products and services at work, typically through the PC, but increasingly from the cloud going forward, and that they will thus logically adopt that same technology, or at least the consumer-facing versions of it, at home.

But that hasn’t really panned out in recent years as individuals have moved from PCs to more mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. And to a new generation of mobile apps and services from Google, Apple, and a host of companies that didn’t even exist just a few years earlier. The world is changing, and we can credit Microsoft with changing along with it. But its inability to attract consumers to its wares has been hugely consistent over the years.

Looking purely at content, I’ve been advising readers to never purchase any movie or TV show content from the Windows Store simply because we cannot trust Microsoft to keep this store going or, as important, keep it competitive with what is available from others like Apple, Google, and Amazon. Too, that shift to mobile devices has limited the appeal of Windows Store content to PCs, which most people do not use to consume this kind of content. There is no inexpensive, mainstream, or simple way to watch Windows Store-purchased content in the living room or on the go. Practically speaking, that really limits the appeal of this store.

(Music is different because it’s not protected by DRM and can be obtained and then used anywhere. Likewise, if you’re going to rent a movie, it doesn’t matter where you get it as long as you have the device on which to watch it.)

So looking at this week’s news with a negative bent, the addition of e-books to Windows Store kind of lands with a thud. In fact, you could argue that e-book content is even less viable on Windows 10. I mean, surely some people will watch movies on Windows 10 laptops. But read books? This market almost doesn’t exist.

That they’ve tied e-books to Edge is even more troubling. This reeks of Microsoft’s efforts to force people to upgrade to Windows 10 last year. Why on earth would e-books be tied to a web browser no one even wants to use? This is just misguided. (Though using Edge as a fallback would be fine if Microsoft did make a high-quality e-book reader app.)

So what about the pro-Microsoft stance?

I get it. I get the need to believe, to think that some next big announcement will change everything. That Microsoft will announce a phone, or a Surface something, that will magically jump start the firm’s mobile ambitions and thrust it back into the limelight.

But Microsoft’s mobile strategy in 2017 has nothing to do with phones, at least not the consumer-focused, volume smartphone market that we all seem so obsessed by. Instead, Microsoft is sticking to its strengths, which is to say the PC, and it is working to innovate within the confines of that market. And it has done well here, with various Surface devices defining and formalizing new markets. And a coming generation of Qualcomm-based ARM devices that will emphasize mobility even further.

And to be fair to Microsoft, it often continues with products and services far past the point of common sense. Yes, we bemoan the loss of things like Media Center, Zune, and Windows phone. But we should really credit them for keeping these failures available for those who simply cannot let go. Most companies would have dropped each far more quickly than Microsoft did.

Looking at content, specifically, Microsoft has, over time, consolidated its content stores under the Windows Store brand after a brief foray with Xbox. And it has expanded its efforts over time. I’m sure that the teams behind Groove (music) and Movies & TV are small. But they have unleashed a torrent of useful updates over the past few years, each driven by customer feedback. So while those stung by the past may continually fear a cancellation, we’ve actually seen the opposite. It’s important to keep this truth in mind.

Look, e-books aren’t a major market, and never will be. And, yes, I know from personal experience that Microsoft has never cared about content types—like podcasts—that don’t drive revenues directly. But the very fact that they are adding books to the Store is interesting, isn’t it? I mean, why bother? Unless of course you actually do give a crap about the people using your products.

Or maybe they’re just being pragmatic.

And it is here that I find my biggest worry, that Microsoft is adding e-book support to Windows 10 because it has to. Because Amazon has effectively abandoned its Kindle apps on Windows, Barnes & Noble is in the toilet, and Apple will never port iBooks to Windows. If this is the real reason that Microsoft is adding e-books to Windows, this effort is doomed.

This was, after all, the rationale for buying the heart and soul of Nokia, which led to $10 billion of losses and counting. But the only thing worse than Microsoft buying Nokia was Microsoft not buying Nokia. The firm called Nokia today owes its very existence to Microsoft taking the amazing hit. And so it is with e-books, on a smaller scale. If Microsoft doesn’t do this, we may not be able to read e-books, effectively, on Windows 10. That would be an embarrassment.

Looked at from a different angle, nothing Microsoft has done to make Windows 10 attractive to developers has worked. Nothing Microsoft has done to drive Windows 10 usage to that one billion mark within three years has worked. Instead, the best the company can do is to stem the losses and slow the decline of the PC. E-Book support can be seen as just a minor part of that strategy. A very minor part. And that’s kind of sad, isn’t it?

Regardless of your take, this issue really does come down to trust. So it will require a bit of soul searching.

I trust Microsoft.

I trust Microsoft more than I trust Apple or Google—it’s not even close—and I mean that in a very deep way. I trust them to deliver the products and services that I rely on to be productive every day. I trust them with my personal information, And I further trust that they do not, and will not, abuse my trust by selling that information to others, like Google does.

But do I trust Microsoft’s content ambitions?

I guess I don’t, not really.

Here’s why: For all the talk about mobile first, cloud first, Microsoft has made no serious effort to bring its Windows Store content to other platforms, beyond porting Groove to Android and iOS. Its music, movie and TV show content—and, yes, e-books—need to be available everywhere. On Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, whatever. Until this happens, I would never buy nor recommend than anyone buy content from Microsoft. It’s just too risky, or at the very least incompatible.

You may feel differently. And Microsoft may surprise us. It could bring Movies & TV to rival mobile platforms, for starters. Or really bring its various content services to the living room, and not just limit them to Xbox. Until and unless it does, Microsoft content is a throwback to the old, closed Microsoft. And that is not something I am particularly excited about. It is absolutely not something I can ever recommend to others.