It seems that Microsoft is willing to keep up certain projects even in the face of tepid demand so long as Google has a competing product in the market. But once Google yanks the plug on a feature that never had a future, Microsoft feels comfortable following suit.
Today, the company ended its Microsoft Hohm product. Google ended its competing service, Google PowerMeter, roughly one week ago. The products were similar enough that they could have been siblings.
While Microsoft remains committed to “tackling the incredible energy and environmental challenges of the 21st century,” Hohm (a play on Ohm, we assume), is out. Why? Because no one seemed to want to use it:
The feedback from customers and partners has remained encouraging throughout Microsoft Hohm’s beta period. However, due to the slow overall market adoption of the service, we are instead focusing our efforts on products and solutions more capable of supporting long-standing growth within this evolving market.
You could translate that to say: “While Hohm seemed to be a good idea, no one gave a damn, so we are letting it go now that Google has taken the pressure off of us to keep investing in it.” Microsoft will continue to run the product until May 31st, 2012, but its jig is up.
Hohm was an application that was designed to allow users to track, and then limit, their power consumption. According to ZDNet Microsoft had plans to transition the product to focus on monitoring electric car charging. Now, that will not happen.
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It makes you ask the question: What else is Microsoft keeping online simply because Google is doing the same?
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