"The check is in the mail, I swear it is!!!"...
biz.yahoo.com
Wednesday December 29, 6:09 pm Eastern Time
Microsoft e-mail service crippled over missed billing
LOS ANGELES, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news), the software giant worth an estimated $600 billion, said on Wednesday its free e-mail service had been partially crippled because it forgot to pay a $35 bill.
Some users of Microsoft's Hotmail service were unable to access their accounts over the Christmas weekend, Kathy Gill, a Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed.
The glitch was caused after Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft failed to pay a $35 fee to registration company Network Solutions (NasdaqNM:NSOL - news) for rights to the Internet domain name passport.com, which verifies user names and passwords for Hotmail and other services, Gill said.
Hotmail has more than 52 million users around the world, but Microsoft said it was unclear how many had experienced problems.
In an ironic twist, the missed billing was discovered and paid by Michael Chaney, an Antioch, Tenn.-based programmer who works with the Linux operating system, an upstart competitor to Microsoft's Windows platform.
On his Web site at doublewide.net, Chaney said he paid the fee with his personal Mastercard on Christmas morning and had received a call on Tuesday from a Microsoft executive thanking him for fixing the problem.
Microsoft said it would refund Chaney the $35, although Chaney hinted his bailout of the world's biggest software company was worth more.
''Microsoft is under no legal obligation to repay the $35 to me, and it doesn't really matter to me if they do or not. If they do ... I would ask that when they make out a check they consider how much revenue would have otherwise been lost had this been down for another day or two, in addition to the inconvenience to people who rely on Hotmail as their only source of e-mail contact,'' Chaney wrote.
KJC |
