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Microsoft's Mirchandani gushes about the Web

Microsoft Corp Managing Director Sanjay Mirchandani delivered the first session of Internet Track I. He spoke of what's hot and what's not on the Web.

But he kept the focus on business and practical issues related to the Internet. That brought out the usefulness that ordinary people have found online.

Reminding the audience of the incredibly high technology adoption rates in the case of Internet, Mirchandani explained that it has been possible because of the many benefits of being online.

"The Web lifestyle is today moving or manifesting every aspect of our life," he enthused. "Living (paying bills, e-mails, shopping, stock trading...), leisure (travel, games, local events...) and learning (classes, kids' homework, exploring, research...), all have seen a tremendous change in method after the Internet.

Web sites of choice are becoming increasingly personalised and personal preferences are updated regularly to offer exactly the stuff the subscriber wants to see.

Advertising is now more targeted and user profiles are carefully monitored in order to offer more specific benefits.

The email sees greater future through the possibility of rich email, Web mail, Web pages in mail and unified messaging.

E-commerce is rising in popularity with great possibilities through intelligent cross-selling like in the case of Amazon.com that offers a customer who buys a particular book, information on other books that customer of that particular book have chosen.

Similarly offering schemes such as 'buy one-get one free' is better enabled by e-commerce. Bidding online for deals such as business exchange, like in tickets, are now possible on the Net.

Web communities link the local community to a topical community like in the community of chess enthusiasts. This again is a popular development on the Internet and has potential for e-commerce targets.

Net databases and knowledge bases that can take up natural language queries such as in the case of different spoken languages and Web directories are bound to extend people's way of living.

To make the Webstyle happen, Mirchandani suggests drastic measures for putting up more online services and infrastructure.

Mirchandani counted the new services that are emerging. These are software distribution, shopping, data collaboration, and collaborated documents on the Internet and online and video teleconferencing.

The future holds promise for high-speed personal portals, content richness and facilities like videoconferencing. But an issue that will come up soon, says Mirchandani, is how long will content be free? The trend will be to expect payment for service, not for access, he felt.

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