Vodafone caves in to Microsoft IM | The Register

Only yesterday Microsoft was complaining that IBM was slowing the progress of the Microsoft XML document format through the standards process. Today we see Microsoft's more typical behaviour towards standards:

Vodafone caves in to Microsoft IM | The Register

Microsoft's monopoly is weakened by standards because standards mean that people can choose the tool they want to use - and they may choose a non Microsoft tool, which in the Microsoft world is unacceptable. This is why Microsoft break standards (c.f. Embrace, Extend and Extinguish).

In the above case the standard that both Microsoft and Vodafone should be adopting is XMPP. But as this would let people choose all kinds of (non-Microsoft) cool tools on all kinds of (non-Microsoft) platforms Microsoft will do all it can to foist it's own closed alternative messaging protocols on the world at large.

Microsoft understands that standards are widely viewed as being a good thing, and so does not openly declare war on standards. Nonetheless, war it is. Look at what Microsoft do, not what they say.