As Microsoft readies the next mass-market version of Windows, XP (which supposedly stands, in some bizarre tip of the hat to Jimi Hendrix, for "Experience"), provocative tidbits of its "integrations" have surfaced. The most outrageous gambit is a little innovation known as Smart Tags -- a tool already built into the Office XP software package that automatically adds new links to documents. You don't choose where on the Internet these links point to; Microsoft does. In Windows XP, Microsoft intends to extend Smart Tags to the Web browser, usurping the heretofore-unchallenged right of a Web site operator to decide where links point.

This sets off very loud alarm bells: Site editors rightly fear the hijacking of their content; site proprietors rightly foresee the hijacking of their businesses. (In my previous paragraph, imagine a link from "Hendrix" to a Microsoft-owned or -partnered music shop -- or, more outrageously, from "antitrust violation" to a Microsoft-slanted definition of that term.) Microsoft, feebly, murmurs that XP remains an unfinished product, and Smart Tags don't look like other links, and maybe they will be turned off by default, and maybe it will be easy for sites to override them. The bottom line remains: Microsoft will choose new directions for its technology, and the very directions the company insists its users are clamoring for will -- by sheer coincidence -- move power over content and commerce into its own hands.

The Smart Tags tool isn't the only trick up Microsoft's XP sleeve. The new Windows will also herd users toward Windows Media Player for multimedia content. It will "integrate" its instant-messaging service to take on AOL's dominance in this arena. And it will aggressively push its Passport service for storing personal information.

Passport is Microsoft's scheme for getting your credit card number and personal information on file; sure, it will offer one-click convenience at many Microsoft-affiliated sites, but it also puts Microsoft in an ideal position to finally make good on its long-held dream of cutting itself a slice of online transactions. (In memos and interviews a few years ago, the company's then chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold, referred to this tollbooth charge as a "vig" -- a term from the patois of bookies, which gives you an idea of the direction from which Microsoft has been drawing its inspiration.) Once we all need to register for Passport to pay the subscription fees Microsoft intends to charge for use of its operating system, Passport will be ubiquitous and unavoidable -- except by those who opt out of the Windows world completely, fleeing for the high ground of Apple's newly reinvigorated operating system or the freehold of Linux, as more and more adventurous souls will do.

Microsoft's role in the ecology of the Internet business has long been to "cut off the air supply" of competitors. Microsoft execs deny coining that memorable phrase, which emerged during the antitrust trial -- but whether they used it or not, it accurately describes the company's tactics. Today, AOL -- with its tens of millions of subscribers -- has the luxury of, in essence, being the atmosphere of the online world. Where Microsoft needs to subsidize its online efforts with the obscene profits generated by its desktop-software monopoly, AOL controls the world's largest stream of direct revenue from online services. This is thanks to the company's unique position in serving as the country's biggest Internet service provider and its largest producer of content (since the merger with Time Warner).

AOL won this position by offering new users a genuinely easy method of getting online, and by locking those users into AOL buddy lists and instant-messaging services. Users pay AOL their monthly connection fee (which seems to creep up a couple of dollars every year or two) and then AOL tries to leverage the relationship through advertising and promotions. Smart business? Sure -- but one that relies on users' lack of smarts.

It's not yet clear how AOL will respond to Microsoft's offensive, but you can be sure it will give up no ground without a battle -- in the courts or the consumer market or the software arena or everywhere at once. AOL will do everything in its power, as it always has, to keep users' eyes and dollars from roaming beyond AOL turf -- and now that AOL's turf is so vast, that's an easier task.

The Free Software Project
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