Showdown looms over Passport
Published: 23 Apr 2002 09:00 BST
David Cole, vice president of the MSN and Personal Services Group, is the seventh witness called by Microsoft in a proceeding that could determine a remedy for the company's antitrust violations. Nine states and the District of Columbia rested their portion of the proceedings on Monday. As with other witnesses, Cole submitted written testimony to the court, after which the states started their cross-examination. Written testimony carries the same weight as that given orally. The two sides present written testimony for expediency, as the court has limited the proceeding to 100 hours.
In his written testimony, Cole addressed concerns raised by states' witnesses John Borthwick of AOL Time Warner and Sun Microsystems Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Schwartz. They charged that Microsoft uses its Windows monopoly to compel consumers to sign up for Microsoft's Passport authentication system.
Market researcher Gartner bolstered that claim on Wednesday by reporting that 84 percent of consumers signed up for Passport because a Microsoft product or Web service required a Passport account.
Passport, like competing services backed by AOL Time Warner and Sun, offers consumers a single login for signing on to multiple Web sites and services, eliminating the need for many different IDs and passwords. Identity services like Passport are seen as essential components for companies moving into consumer Web services.
Microsoft has identified Passport as an essential component of its .Net software-as-a-service strategy. Microsoft announced .Net My Services last March and is still struggling to find a business model for the plan.
In his written testimony, Cole rebuffed allegations Borthwick and Schwartz made about Passport.
"It is misleading to assert, as Mr. Borthwick did, that Passport is a 'critical bridge' from the Windows desktop to a 'new world' of 'Microsoft services' or that Passport 'serves primarily as a virtual toll gate into Microsoft's .Net services.'" Cole emphasized that Passport is "free to end users and does not require them to use any Microsoft software." He noted that people can register for Passport by using any e-mail address, even a fictitious one, and that the service can be accessed from many popular Web browsers and competing operating systems such as Apple Computer's Mac OS X or Red Hat's Linux.
Cole explained that Passport Manager, a utility Web site operators use to run the authentication service, works on non-Microsoft operating systems such as Linux. He testified there are 147 live Passport sites today, "61 of which are non-Microsoft sites...Passport-enabled Web sites also are not required to run Microsoft operating system software on their sites."
Microsoft launched Passport, built on technology acquired from Firefly Technology, in 1999. Microsoft built the service because no authentication system existed at the time, Cole said. But the company felt such a service would be key for Hotmail, MSN Messenger and other Microsoft online services where establishing identity is essential.
"Those online services now utilize Passport as their user authentication mechanism," he testified. "Passport is not a 'tollgate' for those services, but rather an enabler of those services by providing the user authentication those services need."
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