Microsoft is starting the offensive. Microsoft said Monday that it was committing fully to Windows Live, with 20 new services currently in various stages of testing. Windows Live Messenger is the first global product from the lineup to come out of beta, and the company says others would soon follow. The instant messaging client was selected as the first to exit beta because of its importance in tying other Live services together. You can already download it at this page. Microsoft is feeling the heat from small, niche players offering software as a service, as well as from larger competitors. For example, its nemesis Google. has a growing menu of hosted software for consumers and businesses which includes spreadsheet, word processing, photo sharing, Web analytics, and mapping applications.

“In many ways Windows Live Messenger is one of the main hubs of Windows Live,” Windows Live and MSN corporate vice president Martin Taylor said. “Windows Live Messenger also is the first core service that incorporates the sleek user interface and look-and-feel that will be used across all of the Windows Live services.” The company also plans to open up the Windows Live platform eventually to allow advertisers, developers and businesses to build their services on top of Windows Live. An SDK is currently in beta testing. This will probably mean another portion of these annoying flashing banners in your IM client. However I’m pretty sure there will be some special tool / fix to remove these ads as it was with previous versions of the majority of clients for instant messaging. Microsoft has a quite hard position at the moment, because the market and users are used to “standards” like AOL, MSN or ICQ and new IM client will have to fight hard to gain some decent position…

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