Microsoft has quietly shelved a consumer information service that was once planned as the centerpiece of the software giant's foray into the market for tightly linked Web services.
The service, originally code-named Hailstorm and later renamed My Services, was to be the clearest example of the company's ambitious .Net strategy.
It was intended to permit an individual to keep an online persona independent of his or her desktop computer, supposedly safely stored as part of a vast data repository where it could be easily accessed from any point on the Internet.
At the time of the introduction of My Services, Microsoft also proclaimed that it would have a set of high-profile partners in such areas as finance and travel for the My Services system. However, according to both industry consultants and Microsoft partners, after nine months of intense effort, the company was unable to find any partner willing to commit to the program.
Industry executives said the caution displayed by consumer giants like American Express and Citigroup illuminated a bitter tug-of-war being fought over consumer information by some of the nation's largest financial and information companies.
"They ran into the reality that many companies don't want any company between them and their customers," said David Smith, vice president of Internet Services for the Gartner Group, a computer industry consulting and research firm.
The lack of interest also indicates that in a variety of industries outside the desktop computer business there remains significant concern about Microsoft's potential to use its personal computer monopoly and its .Net software to leverage its brand into a broad range of service businesses.
An early signal that the My Services idea was in trouble came last fall at Microsoft's annual developer's conference, attended by more than 6,000 programmers. The company's sessions on My Services were poorly attended, said an attendee.
"There was incredible customer resistance," said a Microsoft .Net consultant, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. Microsoft was unable to persuade either consumer companies or software developers that it had solved all of the privacy and security issues raised by the prospect of keeping personal information in a centralized repository, he said.
Microsoft executives acknowledged the shift in strategy and said the company was still contemplating how it would launch a revised version of the My Services technology.
In December, that strategic shift led to the relocation of several dozen programmers from a consumer products development group run by Robert Muglia to the company's operating systems division.
"We're sort of in the Hegelian synthesis of figuring out where the products go once they've encountered the reality of the marketplace," said Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft's general manager for platform strategy.
He said part of the decision to back away from a consumer version of My Services was based on industry concerns about who was going to manage customer data. The issue, he asserted, was more of a sticking point within the industry, rather than among consumers.
"We heard a lot of concern about that point from competitors in the industry but very little from our users," he said.
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