Microsoft and BBC link up

The British Broadcasting Corporation and Microsoft this week announced that they signed a memorandum of understanding to develop new Internet projects. According to this BBC story areas that will be covered will include search and navigation, distribution and content enablement.

Microsoft is a big champion of collaboration agreements with other big players in the communications value chain, striking strategic partnerships with the likes of BT and Deutsche Telekom to develop a wide range of services. (These have most recently included agreements to use Microsoft’s IPTV platform for their digital TV services.)

But if these deals are much to go by, viewers will see little in the way of completely new and exclusive products. Instead, the deal will provide another channel for Microsoft to utilise products it’s already created, and of course a new customer, in the form of the BBC. The BBC, on the other hand, will be able to use this technology boost to provide more compelling programming and services in the face of lots of fancy offerings from everyone else.