One law for the rich, another for the poor – there have been angry howls of anguish among Microsoft Network users over the electronic mail system being out for 36 hours, but Microsoft Corp, one of the world’s most profitable companies, doesn’t seem to be receiving nearly as much flak as America Online Inc – which is only ever profitable on a really good day – receives when its network goes down for just an hour. Yet unless it was for cost reasons, even if it was periodically crashing, it’s difficult to understand why Microsoft was unable to keep an old mail system running while it tested and shook down an expanded one. No doubt it’s skimping on that kind of thing that enables it to make so much profit. Microsoft has been heavily promoting the Microsoft Network, and in particular the electronic mail service, yet according to the San Francisco Chronicle, it says the outage was caused by a growing number of subscribers who are sending a growing number of messages.
