Respect to Microsoft

I was delighted to have received a tweeted apology from a product manager at Microsoft  in response to my blog post about  Microsoft closing my SkyDrive account,  behaving like the Parisian police did in 1917.

I also received a personal email outlining Microsoft’s policy and how they had mistakenly applied it in my case.

I had further  correspondence with the product manager  on the subject of what Microsoft calls ‘established’ works of art. In which he described the ‘delicate balance’ Microsoft needs to take in dealing with 140+ countries on exactly what is and what is not obscene content – they are ‘constantly learning’ and, in  my case they had ‘made a mistake.’

I do have some empathy as I recall when providing SMS subscription services for a UK mobile operator, in 2000.  I was castigated by the operator’s  product manager for allowing a joke to go out to several thousand subscribers which  had the word 'school' spelt as 'skool'. Corporate monoliths such as Microsoft, mobile operators and others have to maintain ‘standards’, however these standards must reflect the times, if they are not to lose touch with their users.

What’s so refreshing with my case is the speed and candor with which Microsoft handled the situation, the tweet and subsequent correspondence clearly indicate that a monolith can have a human face, so respect to Microsoft they evidently want to keep in touch with the times and their users.

BTW My SkyDrive is open now and I am using it freely. At the risk of being accused of being a sycophant it is great value: 25GB on line  plus 5GB sync making 30GB  for free.  With Google you ‘only’ have 9GB  free – I have to pay  5$/yr for my extra 20GB 

Further Google’s memory usage calculation across its services Gmail, Docs, and Picasa is complex,  Microsoft's approach is much simpler so, for me Microsoft's SkyDrive tops Google’s Docs