Microsoft Web plan takes aim at Google

by admin September 8, 2005 at 3:48 pm

Microsoft will take aim at rival Google next week with a new Web development plan.

The software company plans to open up access to its MSN and other public Web sites to let developers assemble new applications that build on those sites–a technique used successfully at Google and at other Web companies to promote their properties.

Microsoft will detail its “Web platform” strategy at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles next week, company executives told CNET News.com. It intends to publish the application programming interfaces, or APIs, to some of its public Web sites, including MSN Search, and deliver better tooling to write those applications.

The goal: to embrace the emerging model, often called Web 2.0 or the programmable Web, where new applications are built using pieces of existing, public Web sites. Rather than simply providing access to Web pages, these companies treat their Web sites as a development platform, much like an operating system. For example, a third-party developer could write an application, or “mash-up,” that pulls location information from a person’s blog and plots it on a map using Google Maps or a similar service.

Full article: ZDNet News