There are more rumors that Bill Gates doesn't just want the interface - he wants the pipes. Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is talking to Time Warner and US West about building a high-bandwidth cable network to compete with @Home.
Microsoft's immediate goal, obviously, would be to gain a distribution outlet for its WebTV service. At the moment, Microsoft and @Home don't compete on the same devices - WebTV currently delivers Web access to consumers on TV screens via a proprietary set-top box; @Home delivers Web access to personal computers via a cable-equipped modem.
But the potential competition is apparent, and Microsoft has (so far unsuccessfully) been seeking to have its Windows CE software and WebTV hardware adopted as a standard interface by the cable industry. In June, Microsoft invested US$1 billion in Comcast, another major cable player.
"Our goals are very simple: Sell software," Microsoft's Craig Mundie told the Journal. "Microsoft continues to invest both in research and development, products and business relationships - every way we can to encourage the deployment of these kinds of digital communication services."
An @Home executive declined to comment about the potential rivalry.
Strangely, and apparently unrelatedly, today's Journal story accompanied an announcement that @Home would distribute an @Home-branded version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 browser to its customers.
