And why would Microsoft want to do that? Well, controlling developers--and the tools they use--is just the most insidious way it stamps out competition. Programmers get hooked on Microsoft's tools because they're so easy to use. After that, they tend to use other Microsoft products, too. As time goes on, it becomes more and more difficult for developers to follow a competitor's path.

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I am reminded of this on the occasion of Microsoft's launch of its new Visual Studio.Net, its next-generation suite for people who build software applications for a living. It supports 20 programming languages--including Microsoft's new C# (say C-sharp)--and is cool enough that even a non-coder like me can appreciate the advance it represents.

Last summer I spent a day playing with a beta release of the software and was impressed at how helpful VS.Net is in making the sometimes-arduous task of software development a bit easier.

More importantly, at least from Microsoft's strategic view, is that Visual Studio.Net is the first tool that gives programmers the ability to develop the Web services that everyone--everyone being IBM, Sun, and Microsoft--seems to agree are the future of software development. (See my recent column for more on why Web services are a big deal.)

If developers take a liking to its new tools, Microsoft will be in an excellent position to rule the Web services world. Developers who use Visual Studio.Net will likely also choose to use--and design software for--other members of the .Net family. I'm talking about .Net servers, and services such as Passport, Microsoft's controversial user-authentication scheme. See how this works?

I can't write about the advent of the Web services era in computer programming without mentioning something: Lots of other people thought of this before Microsoft.

Getting into this too deeply will require a level of technical detail that will result in drowsiness for all of us, so just accept my word that a lot of what Microsoft calls Web services could previously be implemented in Unix.

And Sun's Java programming language/environment has been promising Web services since its introduction. Of course, Sun didn't call these Web services until recently--it started using the term only after Microsoft made it cool.

Say what you will about Microsoft, but the company has an amazing ability to get the industry pointed in the same direction. Microsoft usually isn't the company that first discovers a new direction, but once Redmond latches onto a concept, amazing things can happen.

We've seen this before. In late 1995, when Microsoft noticed it was lagging on the Internet, it made Internet development Job No. 1. In little more than a year, the Net became a key component of all aspects of Microsoft's business. More recently, Microsoft has named both Web services and security (or Trustworthy Computing, as Bill Gates calls it) its current top jobs. Expect to see some serious advancement in these areas, now, too.

For years, Sun used the slogan "the network is the computer," an intriguing promise the company was never really able to make good on. With Web services, this notion--that the computer is a collection of distributed hardware and software working together--should finally come together.

But while Sun and IBM will play key roles in the development and acceptance of Web services, it will be Microsoft that decides how the game is played. And it will do so, at least in part, because it controls many of the tools developers will use to build them.

Should Microsoft be criticized for its domination of developer tools? Or is it just good business? Will Microsoft's .Net rule Web services like MS rules OSes and Web browsers? Or does Java have a chance? Talk Back below.

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