Microsoft continues as always

Embrase, Extend, Extinguish has long been one of Microsoft's operating principles and it now appears that Microsoft are extending their clammy embrase to RSS the synication system used by many weblogs (blogger uses Atom, many just to be difficult).

In a move likely to unsettle many outside Microsoft, the company said it is actively exploring the right name to use for RSS feeds, with the current working term being "web feeds". The name "web feeds" is currently used to describe initial support for the discovery and reading of RSS feeds in the IE 7.0 Beta 1, which was released this summer. Microsoft is also adding its own technology to RSS, according to reports.

They are also building RSS (or WebFeeds as they like to call them) directly into the OS rather than just the browser.

Now what does this remind me of, oh yes. When Microsoft Embrased and extended HTML (but found it rather hard to extinguish, even if their lack of standards compliance haughts us to this day) and their exploitation of their monopoly position to drive Netscape out of business. Have they learned nothing? By hooking IE deep into the system they opened up a whole new vista of viral possibilities including the worms and mass mailers that have become so endemic. I wonder how long after the release of Vista we will see the first viral podcast and malware agrigators?