Why Microsoft is dumping Money |
Register here for our next TechFlash Live networking event, March 23, featuring an expert panel discussing the future of online advertising.
Why Microsoft is dumping Money
After nearly two decades in the business, Microsoft plans to stop selling its Microsoft Money personal-finance software, a company spokesman confirmed today. CNet News.com broke the story earlier today. The move, a potential boon for Intuit's Quicken software, follows Microsoft's move last year to discontinue sales of Money in retail boxes in favor of online downloads.
"Banks are offering a lot of these services directly, and it's unclear where the demand is for a single, integrated experience when a lot of financial institutions and investment firms allow you to do this already," said Adam Sohn, a marketing and communications director in Microsoft's online division. "We decided that it made the most sense for us to begin this decommission."
Sales will stop at the end of this month. Microsoft expects to notify customers of the plan over the next 24 hours. The company will offer customer support for Microsoft Money through January 2011.
"It's not an overnight thing," Sohn said. "There's still a lot of time for people to get value out of this product, but we think over the long term, this was the right thing to do for Microsoft and for the customer, based on what we're seeing and how the space is evolving."
Microsoft has been tightening its belt in the face of the difficult economy, and Money is just the latest product to be cut by the Redmond company. Microsoft earlier this year announced plans to discontinue its online Encarta encyclopedia. Late last year, Microsoft said it would discontinue its Windows Live OneCare product and offer a free anti-malware program instead.
Update, 5:45 p.m.: This just in from a Microsoft representative: "Microsoft is working with Intuit to help develop a file conversion process that will help Money customers more easily convert their existing data files to Quicken. Both Intuit and Microsoft hope this will be ready to go for the new release of Quicken this fall."
Follow-up: Intuit's Quicken prepares to embrace MS Money refugees.
About Todd Bishop
Todd Bishop is co-founder and managing editor of TechFlash. He has covered Microsoft and the technology industry for more than five years, most recently as a daily newspaper reporter and blogger based in Seattle.
READ FULL BIOGRAPHYRecent Sponsor Posts
Seattle University Software Engineering
Chinwe Okeke (MSE’08) pursued her graduate degree while working as a developer and technical analyst for the Boeing Company. She picked the SU-MSE program for small class sizes and real world learning opportunities offered through the academic service-learning and capstone projects.
The MSE program at Seattle University is geared for working professionals with classes offered in the evenings. The program builds upon the computing experience of its students and offers courses in a variety of technical and management areas of software engineering, with an emphasis on teamwork and a disciplined approach to problem solving.
Marchex is one of Seattle’s largest ad technology companies with 300+ employees providing call and click based performance marketing products, and managing over $100m in ad budget for tens of thousands of advertisers. Our customers range from local businesses to the Fortune 500.
Our talented and creative product engineering group is hiring.
If you are an innovative software design engineer interested in solving difficult problems at scale, across a wide array of technologies from Lucene to Hadoop to Asterisk and SIP then we’d love to hear from you!
Apply now.
Technology Tax Planning – Did You Take The Deduction?
Technology companies require professional advisors who can assist in all aspects of the business. The BDO Technology Practice provides a full range of services tailored to help address the changing needs of domestic and international companies. In addition to core audit and tax services, BDO professionals can assist technology companies with:
· Revenue recognition
· Business combination accounting
· R&D tax credits
· Compensation and benefits
· Business valuations
Backed by 38 national offices and an international network in 110 countries, we have the domestic and global footprint to serve growing technology companies. Contact sphilpott@bdo.com (audit partner), mreeves@bdo.com (audit partner), psmith@bdo.com (tax partner), tzambito@bdovaluation.us.com (valuation), tfiscus@bdo.com, Director, 206.624.2020
Job Listings
- Software Development Engineer - Display Advertising
- Business Services Company
- Director Enterprise Architecture - IT
- Starbucks Coffee Company
- Senior Program Manager - External - 713665
- Microsoft Corporation
- Quality Improvement Specialist
- HCR ManorCare
- Senior Software Development Engineer - eXtreme Computing Group - 708427
- Microsoft Corporation
