The Net profit from Microsoft

Microsoft has taken a long hard look at what it calls the InternetBusiness Model (note the initials) and has come up with a gameplan inwhich it will give away a lot of software in order to gain the upper handon the Net. Bobby Pickering asks if there is room in this IBM forretailers.

There's a Mel Brooks film called Silent Movie in which a big film production company is faced with takeover by a large global conglomerate called Engulf and Devour (it's been so long since I saw it, I had to look it up in my much-spun copy of Cinemania 96 to check my facts). Engulf and Devour slipped into my mind a few weeks ago while I was having my brain re-engineered at a Microsoft briefing on its plans for the Internet.

I found that when I looked at the black T-shirts they were giving out, the legend on them,