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Is a Microsoft-Rogers partnership on the horizon?

LUANN LASALLE

Canadian Press

Latest comment posted at 9:48 AM EDT 05/02/08

Country's largest ISP has a close relationship with Yahoo while Bell aligned with Microsoft ...Read the full article

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  1. Clark The Mighty from Canada writes: Great...two garbage companies that use government/monopolistic ties to grow despite their crap products and garbage service.

    Yippeeee.

    Rogers sucks. Bell sucks worse.
  2. brokeback mountain from Canada writes: well, steve balmer was in town so many times, dont you know that?
  3. m. r. from Canada writes: so Rogers goes to Google and all is well. I am on Rogers and see little contact with Yahoo. I am on IE 7 and OE and use Google to search. the situation suits me fine. most users in my opinion want a
    good and reliable system that is easy to use. computer software and hardware companies are too busy trying to complicate and confuse rather than simplify and standardize. I expect Rogers to
    look at the new situation carefully and then decide an alliance that will serve its customers well.
  4. Comments are Closed from Toronto, Canada writes: They might as well - Rogers has never had any interest in Mac customers beyond taking our money anyway. A company that worships Explorer which was terminated for the mac years ago.

    I wonder how this would affect the iPhone monopoly? Gates selling iPhones. Reminds me of the Emperor taking money from the public toilettes. That seems to be his style.
  5. Albin Forone from Toronto, Canada writes: Careful Globe comments readers will know that I broke this story about Cdn ISPs hours after the announcement. As for the impact, there's no evidence Google wants to step in to the "partner portal" space for Rogers and no evidence that MSN would maintain a separate "brand" for Yahoo for long. Yahoo search is nearly equivalent to Google's, Yahoo's online mail is best on the net, Yahoo has the best RSS aggregation and most versatile personal page (my.yahoo) available, Yahoo "intellisync" coordinates MS Outlook and Yahoo's address book and calendar very effectively. On the other hand, Yahoo does not support quotes and research for Canadian financial markets while MSN, with limitations, does so (the Globe wins out on that.) Google, for my money, offers the best search and the best mapping, and not much else of interest. For Canadians, if Bell has priority rights to join a merged MSN/Yahoo portal service, Rogers will be left high and dry.
  6. Kan Tankerous from Tronna, Canada writes: I was one of the first to sign up when broadband connections were introduced. Rogers was the only broadband available at the time. I stuck with it for many years and it was a horrible service. Frequent outages. But, the straw that broke the camel's back was Roger's limiting bandwidth on P2P connections. They also stopped access to newsgroup servers, which I never used, but irked me nonetheless. I dumped Rogers internet and TV about a year ago and it was the best move I ever made. For television, I am back to the old rabbit ears and it suits me fine because I never watched more than 2 or 3 channels anyway. Bell is simply not an option.

    As far as internet goes I went with AOL Broadband (DSL). I know some people will think they are no better, but they are. No bandwidth limits. Very reliable, no outages. There are local DSL providers, but they are pretty shady really. It would be nice to hear from people in western/northern/eastern Canada about their services. And Mr. r...IE7 sucks, clunky and slow...try Firefox.
  7. Tony . from Waterloo, Canada writes:
    Maybe it's just me, but this seems like a total non-issue. The whole idea of 'portal partners' is a good 5-10 years out of date. If Rogers dropped the service altogether probably 90% of their customers wouldn't even notice.

    People now use their ISP to get data and not much else. Most people have their browser home page either set to blank (my personal choice), their favorite Internet search engine (usually Google) or their favorite social networking site (MySpace, Facebook, whatever). Their email is handled through whatever service they decided on totally seperate from their ISP because no one wants to change email addresses every time they move.

    Personally I'm with Bell and I never even took the MSN CD out of the package. While I was with Rogers I never bothered with the Yahoo CD either.

    I think most Internet users are like me, we just want a fast, reliable, unfiltered data connection that doesn't cost too much. All the rest of the advertising garbage packaged with it is the equivalent of junk mail.
  8. John Locke from Canada writes: "upstart" Google - I love it. So 2002.
  9. Albin Forone from Toronto, Canada writes: Tony, You're right for the most part, but a) the "portal partnerships" in Canada are relatively recent, and b) for the consumer, the portal partner dictates the quality of email and spam filtering since its monster servers handle the Canadian ISP's traffic, and 3) even without the paid premium service, portals can and do offer services that are ready to hand and sometimes better and cheaper than what's available on the Wild Wild Web (WWW.) For example, I found MSN/Sympatico offering very good free holiday e-greeting cards for casual use, and I think they will become go to platforms for music, photo organizing, movie rentals, etc. Personally, for getting essential search and mapping, bookmark links, RSS feeds, and email alerts on one three-column page I haven't found anything to beat Yahoo, even though I pay Sympatico for internet. My only real beef is Yahoo's lack of Cdn financial market data.
  10. Stefan Caunter from Hamilton, Canada writes: Historically, Rogers had to partner with Yahoo because they had endless trouble running email properly. They basically punted on the whole deal and outsourced it to Yahoo. Anyone who has ever ran mail servers knows that delays to Yahoo, which happen all the time, mean delays to Rogers. Little wonder people really don't use ISP mailboxes anymore. Web based email has come to totally dominate that service.
    For those who dislike Rogers, and Bell, and Microsoft, and any other large target. Don't use them. Get an antenna if you must have a television. If you have a television, and really want to watch it, what exactly are you complaining about? It is a way to get as much sales messaging into your head as possible. That's TV. Always has been. But you have a choice. Do something else. It's either on or off. Leave it off.
  11. Kan Tankerous from Tronna, Canada writes: Stefan, did you read any of the previous comments? Who are you talking to?
  12. Joe Flow from Canada writes: Rogers had the worst service of any company I ever did business with....bar none. I used them as a cell provider about 10 years ago, and will NEVER use them in ANY capacity for anything, again. My bills were routinely overcharged...not just a couple of times, but literally EVERY month of the contract.

    I had to call customer service EVERY month, for 3 years...and they would drop the questionable charges off my bill. I am quite sure I was not the sole recipient of this abysmal service, and if only 10% of the customers didn't do what I did in terms of policing my bills, Rogers would make a tidy profit just off of overcharges.

    I got a bill from Rogers 3 years after my contract was terminated, stating that I still owed them $0.03. Correct, three cents. When I talked to a lady at customer service there, I told her I wasn't going to pay the bill. She asked me why and when I told her, she volunteered to pay it for me out of her pocket.

    Rogers SUCKS big-time....very dishonest. I am not defending Bell, but I have never had to deal with overbilling practices with Bell Mobility.
  13. Tony . from Waterloo, Canada writes: Albin Forone from Toronto, Canada writes: "b) for the consumer, the portal partner dictates the quality of email and spam filtering since its monster servers handle the Canadian ISP's traffic"

    Hardly anyone I know of use their ISPs email because they don't want to have to send all their contacts a new email address every time they switch service providers. Sure some people use Yahoo or MSN/Hotmail accounts, but it's normally entirely separate from the portal.

    Just as an example, I use a Yahoo account as my main email despite the fact that I'm currently with Sympatico. Since setting it up I've been through both Rogers and Sympatico as well as Magma (before the Primus buyout) and overseas ISPs.

    "3) even without the paid premium service, portals can and do offer services"

    Again though these services are essentially unrelated to the portal partnership though. A Roger's customer could just as easily use the MSN greetings card just as easily as a Bell customer could use a Yahoo's RSS services or either one could use any of Google's many services.

    The amount of additional functionality that these portal partnerships gives to customers, above and beyond what is freely available to all internet users, is extraordinarily limited. It's all MUCH more about marketing than actual service.
  14. Jack Robinson from London, Canada writes: Hey, I think it's really swell dat Microdick gobble up Yazoo ta grease Goo-Goo for their righteous share a da Internut.

    Now if dey could just get Izzy's Boyz in a da action... and maybe dem Moto Razor yakuzas wid da WiFi hoodoo goin'... we'd all be singin' Soprano like choirboyz in da Reign!
  15. Albin Forone from Toronto, Canada writes: Tony, Good points again for relatively recent / home users - it has not been so long that Yahoo, MSN, Google started offering virtually unlimited bandwidth and storage for email - many of us established our personal / professional email accounts with the ISP precisely to avoid nuisance limits to online email. Starting all over again today the online email is damn good, especially services like Yahoo that provide domain name flexibility for a few bucks a year. Re services, I don't think the ISPs have come close to maximizing their potential for bundling services at a discount to stand alone consumer contracts: you see the clumsy start of it with Sympatico anti-virus support, MSN "Premium" but consider getting a reasonable Sympatico monthly fee bundle of online access to to a menu of major Canadian news and entertainment media, movies, music, security, online gaming, income tax software, wi-fi hotspot and wireless data, etc. The ISPs need major portal partners to get past the ad hoc and confusing mishmash of existing service offerings that nobody can or wants to keep up with .
  16. Sarvjit Karir from Mississauga, Canada writes: All of them are a bunch of theives. So wether the live in the same house or different houses, we are ones they are going to rob anyways
  17. Angry West Coast Canuck from Canada writes: Question is, where the hell is our government and our competition enforcers when it comes to slimy dealings by Microsoft? Why are we one of the only countries to not have even STARTED an investigation, let alone brought charges against this flagrant monopolist and its abuse of its (illegally) acquired position?

    Or is our party system so corrupt that Microsoft's donations to the parties in power (Liberal or Conservative, doesn't matter) was enough to forestall any investigation getting approved?
  18. bob london from Canada writes: What is the chance Microsoft doesn't care about either one of them. The fact they are two Canadian Monopolies doesn't matter to the US, they probably laugh. Too bad we have to deal with Rogers and Bell because we sure don't get to laugh.
  19. Non Conformist from Halifax, Canada writes: MicroSoft needs to challenge Goggle's dominance of the internet ??? Huh ?! How come Goggle does not need to challenge MicroSoft's dominance of operating systems ? Why is everyone so brainwashed ?

    "The corporate grip on opinion ... is one of the wonders of the Western world" - Gore Vidal
  20. Jeremy McGee from Canada writes: What a silly irrelevant article. Way to up the parochial, Canada-angle quotient.
  21. Mike Potter from Hamilton, Canada writes: All of the companies mentioned have serious problems and most of them come from ineffective management. The good news is you can replace any of these companies products with better quality and service from just about anyone else
  22. Bill Foonman from Jacksonville, United States writes: Why not? These two institutionally arrogant companies would make great bedmates.

    Either way, it's hardly likely their customers would benefit. With Rogers in particular, they never do unless it's in Rogers' best interest.
  23. M B from Calgary, Canada writes: Dear Bill Gates:
    You don't need to spend $ 45B on Yahoo. Just clean up & simplify the MSN interface to a semi-blank screen similar to Google and I'd happly look at using it more often.
  24. J S from Toronto, Canada writes: Excellent! This means Microsoft will now deliver e-mail to 99% of Canadians. What a great deal to add competition to the market... How can this happen??
  25. brokeback mountain from toronto, Canada writes: that assumes Ted Rogers and Steve Ballmer/Bill Gates get along..
  26. Bob Duvan from Canada writes: " Is a Microsoft-Rogers partnership on the horizon? "
    A typical tabloid headline by an attention starved mop-and-pail writer on top of a routine CP report.

    m.r. "I expect Rogers to
    look at the new situation carefully and then decide an alliance that will serve its customers well." Are you serious? Rogers thinking about serving its customers well?? That den of extortionists has very different priorities.

    It seems to me rather blinkered to worry about monopolies formed in the US. We need to scream our heads off about the obscene exploitation of Canadians by the media oligopoly that is protected and nurtured by those guardians of special interests: the CRTC and its training league - the Canadian Competition Commission.
  27. Clark The Mighty from Canada writes: Albin Forone from Toronto, Canada writes: Yahoo search is nearly equivalent to Google's, Yahoo's online mail is best on the net
    _________

    No they are not.

    Yahoo search is weak and Yahoo's mail is miles behind Google in terms of interface, look, and ease of use.
  28. Mark Mitchell from London, Canada writes: Just as long as we can't receive U.S. satellite signals, or U.S. cell phone provision, or you know, anything at fair market prices. Rogers and Microsoft fine, just as long as my government continue to allow me to be gouged.
  29. pran manga from Canada writes: More monopoly or market power for both, which is obviously bad for consumers.I trust that the government will disallow such concentration of economic power. It has not done a good job of this so far but one has to hope ....
  30. John Doucette from Manotick, Canada writes: Rogers will partner with anyone in the interests of poorer service at higher profit.

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