Re: Unfair business or smart business?

[Marianne Wolfman <marianne@ccnet.com>]

  Michael,
  
  As if Microsoft "featuring" certain service providers on their small
  business server, for a price, weren't enough to arose curiosity, add the
  fact that ISPs like Verio are gobbling up small ISPs like they were candy,
  reducing the number of ISPs in the choice pool.  Microsoft's leverage grows
  as the pool shrinks.  
  
  Verio is also a Business Development Partner of Microsoft, concerned, by
  their own description, with the promotion of Microsoft products and Verio
  services and using Microsoft products extensively.  See
  www.verio.com/corporate/partners.html.
  
  Anybody know how extensive the Business Partner network with Microsoft is?
  
     ---  Marianne        marianne@ccnet.com
  
  
  
  At 12:18 11/10/97 -0500, Michael Katz wrote:
  >I recently attended an event announcing the release of Microsoft's Small
  >Business Server.  ...<snip>
  >An interesting aspect of the demo was the Internet Connection Wizard.
  ...<snip>
  
  >When Microsoft ran the demo, two Internet service providers appeared on the
  >list (Sprynet and Verio) of ISP's with whom the end-user could enroll
  >automatically.  What I discovered later is that ISP's must pay a tidy
  >recurring fee in order to appear on this list of "preferred" providers.