AS Microsoft's Bill Gates has often said, while the Internet will be the medium of the future, content will be king.
With that in mind, the company is about to recruit journalists, editors and World Wide Web designers for two new projects it's embarking on in Ireland.
The first draws on MS NBC TV, Microsoft's much hyped joint venture with US television giant NBC. It will consist of an Internet version of the service known as MSNBC Interactive, providing both local Irish news and global reports.
The second project, codenamed City Scape, is a less widely publicised Internet listings and entertainment service. It will be launched in London in the next couple of months and in Dublin by the end of the year.
City Scape is expected to compete directly with the online versions of existing listings magazines such as In Dublin and Time Out.
"We currently have a core team of full time journalists and freelances working out of Microsoft UK headquarters in Wokingham, Berkshire," says Judy Gibbons, director of the Microsoft Network for Britain and Ireland. "But we will be gradually extending the network to other cities in the UK and Ireland, reaching Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland by the end of the year."
Gibbons says the type of service that Microsoft hopes to offer will be vastly different to current publishing efforts on the Net. It will take much the same line as it has with Encarta, its CD Rom encyclopaedia.
"The reason Encarta is so popular is because it lets you do things that you can't do with a normal encyclopaedia," she says.
"We plan to offer services where you will be able to browse the cinema listings for a film, view a clip, book the tickets and reserve a restaurant nearby, print out a map of the area and find out what time the last bus leaves for home."
Reaction from rival publications has been swift. "I think that idea is trainspotterish in the extreme," says In Dublin's editor, John Ryan. "You're not seriously telling me that people are going to sit down at their computer and program a weekend for themselves."
Market analysts agree with the comparison between Encarta and Microsoft interactive publishing.
"Encarta isn't very good when you compare it to what's out there, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica," says Bill Bass, a market analyst with Forrester Research. "But that doesn't matter because the data's good enough." He predicts that Microsoft won't redefine quality journalism, but will be able to take advantage of the whistles and bells that interactive publishing allows.
Microsoft says it doesn't expect City Scape to compete with existing publishers. "City Scape will cater to the needs of people living and working in cities," Gibbons said. "But our primary aim is to enable companies and publications to do business on the Internet."
Even so, Gibbons admits that Microsoft will be selling advertising for City Scape in Ireland and England. She envisions that existing magazines will want to work in conjunction with Microsoft: "We will invite publications such as Time Out and In Dublin to partner with us so we could be a potential ally instead of a competitor."
"We are already on the Net," says John Ryan, "and I don't think that anything that Microsoft does can rank as competition unless they recruit all our staff. I believe that Microsoft will find out like many have before them that there is more to publishing than just buying a few computers.
Microsoft has said it will make partnership announcements within the next week.