Liberty Alliance may ask Microsoft to join online ID group
By Rebecca Buckman
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
msnbc.com
Jan. 30 — Some big companies aligned with the Liberty Alliance Project, a technology consortium started by Sun Microsystems Inc. last year, are quietly trying to involve Sun arch-rival Microsoft Corp. in the group.
AT STAKE is whether Microsoft and the roster of blue-chip companies tied to Sun — including UAL Corp.’s United Airlines and General Motors Corp. — will continue to work separately, or together, to make it easier to electronically identify people who want to buy things or do other business over the Internet. The Liberty Alliance was partly inspired by an earlier Microsoft system called Passport, which has links to the Microsoft software that runs most PCs.
But now, “there are several of us talking to Microsoft pretty regularly,” said Eric Dean, United’s chief information officer and the new president of Liberty’s management board. Dean was named to his post in December, partly to put a new, more neutral public face on the 38-member group. Other members include Sony Corp., AOL Time Warner Inc., Nokia Corp. and MasterCard International, all of whom are trying to come up with a set of open technical standards to help companies connect their Web sites and ease online purchasing.
Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., held discussions late last year with Dean and some other non-Sun members of the alliance about joining the group. But the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement before a late-December deadline, both parties said. Still, Microsoft says it continues to talk with Liberty and could join the group under the right circumstances.
Though Sun long has said it would very much like Microsoft to participate in its Web alliance, Sun’s recent criticisms of Passport have annoyed Microsoft officials. Passport also has been criticized by some online-privacy groups who contend the service, a “single sign on” that allows people to move easily between Web sites and make purchases with a credit card, gives Microsoft too much power over users’ personal information. Tuesday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center formally asked all 50 state attorneys general to examine Passport for its privacy implications. Microsoft says the Washington public-interest group has “completely misrepresented Passport in its intent,” and Microsoft “is committed to putting people in control of their personal information.”
Microsoft, in turn, hasn’t been charitable toward the Sun alliance: At a technology conference in October, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer dismissed Liberty as an attempt to copy Passport, saying it “has absolutely zero probability of mattering in the world.”
Despite the recent conciliatory overtures made to Microsoft by Dean and others, including GM Chief Technology Officer Tony Scott, Sun continues to lambaste Microsoft publicly, which could complicate the alliance’s peacemaking efforts.
In an interview this week, for instance, Sun Chief Strategist Jonathan Schwartz said Microsoft’s main, stated concern about joining Liberty — protecting its products’ intellectual property while sharing some technology with the group — “rings hollow for me.” Microsoft hasn’t joined Liberty so far simply because it wants to protect its own, closed systems instead of linking with competing technologies, he said. Though he stressed he wasn’t speaking for the alliance, Schwartz said Microsoft historically has tended to “pursue the expansion of their monopoly and the reduction of choice.”
Microsoft Vice President Brian Arbogast said he is heartened by the “change in tenor” of the alliance’s recent statements, and notes that Microsoft could also work with Liberty without actually becoming a member. Still, he said Sun’s continued criticism of Microsoft “make [Liberty] sound like a very different alliance, with a very different set of goals, than what we hear from Tony and Eric.” Dean says, “I deliberately avoid paying attention to the ego wars on the West Coast.”
Other alliance members stress that Sun’s views don’t necessarily reflect those of Liberty, adding that Sun has only one vote on the group’s 18-member board. “MasterCard doesn’t view this as a Sun solution at all, but a solution that’s being driven by the industry,” said Art Kranzley, MasterCard’s chief e-business officer.
Dean, of United, is even more blunt: “It was a stipulation of ours before we would participate that it be understood [by] Sun and everybody else that we not be at war with Microsoft,” he said. Dean said he talked personally to Sun CEO Scott McNealy about his desire to work with Microsoft, and said McNealy and other Sun executives wanted outside members to take on a bigger leadership role.
In addition, Liberty members say no decisions have yet been made about what type of technology the group would use. That could be another sticking point in working with Microsoft, since Microsoft is rolling out software-development tools that compete with those based on Sun’s Java programming language. If Sun had insisted that Liberty use Java, “the alliance would have crumbled,” said Kevin Wagner, the Liberty representative from wireless-software outfit Openwave Systems Inc.
Most of Liberty’s members use Microsoft’s Windows and Office software and have reason to keep close ties with the software company. United signed a big marketing deal with Microsoft’s MSN Internet service last year. |
