But what are the implications for local Net users?

Despite Trevor Mallard's ongoing denial of suggestions that the government is about to leap into Microsoft's bed in respect to the upcoming e-Government project, Bill Gates was on Friday quoted as saying: "The initiatives that Microsoft New Zealand is working on with the government and our other local partner swill create growth opportunities for the country's entire technology industry."

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Now look closely at the core of that statement: "with the government and our other local partner".

So Bill considers the NZ Government to be a partner eh? What could have possibly led him to form that opinion? After all, as far as we (the taxpayer) are aware, Microsoft has received no special treatment or fiscal concessions from government have they?

Remember that this comment by Gates comes hot on the tail of several clear slips of the tongue by Mallard that tend to indicate that Microsoft is the preferred partner for this venture.

Just what kind of understanding do Bill and Trevor already have in place that we're not being told about? When it comes to Mallard's denial of Microsoft's involvement in the eGovernment project, me think he doth protest too much!

So what about the merger of XTRA.co.nz and MSN.co.nz -- what will be gained here?

Well it sounds like a great piece of synergy to me. XTRA has a good site with some good content and MSN.co.nz has a lot of traffic because of the way most copies of IE are configured to use MSN as their homepage (I mean really, would anyone really use MSN.co.nz their homepage by choice??).

The combination of these two factors almost guarantees that if the two companies build a single co-branded site (such as the NineMSN site in Australia, then it will be the most highly visited piece of realestate in the .nz namespace.

Readers Say (updated hourly) Bill Only Tells The Truth... - Hamish Who visited Seattle?... - Grant From Friday... Mallard say no, Bill G says YES!... - John Have Your Say

And what will this co-branded site be called? Well it's not brain surgery -- A visit to xtramsn.co.nz will help you figure it out.

So why would Microsoft bother investing $300m in a tiny country such as New Zealand?

Okay, so $300m is probably less than Bill Gates spends on reinstalling Windows on his laptop each year -- but he's not silly and he obviously expects to see a significant return on that money.

Now... someone remind me -- how much was the government budgeting for that e-Government project? $16 million was it?

What's that Bill, your back is itchy?

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