Today Qwest announced that it is now the first communications company to announce plans to offer co-branded Windows Live services in the U.S. providing personalized Internet experiences for customers. Marshall Kirkpatrick has posted on his blog that he thinks this was a very good deal and that this is going to help Web 2.0 take off to the road even more than what it is now. 

Software as a service, web applications, data portability – these are the sorts of themes that Microsoft is making moves in support of in the new computing world, in their own way. Tonight they announced a partnership with telecom provider Qwest to offer a custom, co-branded Windows Live software suite to every customer of Qwest’s internet services. This is the kind of thing that’s going to popularize Web 2.0 style software. For all the innovation and hotness of various inspiring start-ups – they are going to have a hard time competing with the market share of companies like MS and Qwest who are able to learn just fast enough to throw their weight around and really change large numbers of people’s computing experience.

Via: PressPass | Marshall Kirkpatrick