Microsoft Tries Out New Windows Storefront
The sneak peak, at www.windowsmarketplace.com shows what the company has in mind for the site where it hopes to aggregate all manner of Windows-related hardware, software for sale and information about them.
Products can be purchased and/or downloaded from the site, with sales going through third parties, Microsoft has said. All sales will go through the channel, Microsoft said last July, although it did not name any specific partners.
The company announced plans for the marketplace at its annual partner confab in July and promised to launch phase one later this year. This preview will let Microsoft, its partners, and "enthusiasts" to test-drive the service and provide feedback, a spokesman said.
The full implementation with promised fancy user interface perks was to have shipped with the Longhorn client. It is unclear if last week's decision to strip the WinFS file system from that client, due in 2006, will affect that plan. In some respects the marketplace is reminiscent of the Windows Catalog already available on line, although that is an informational resource, not an e-commerce site.
This is not Microsoft's first crack at being a shopkeeper. In the late 1990s, it devised and launched an online store, code-named Nitro with a handful of reseller partners.
This new marketplace will be accessible from the Windows "Start" button for users running Windows XP SP2.