News Reader...

[Dave A]

Tell me if I am going out on a limb but.... why isn't an NNTP news reader
incorporated into Outlook? I know there is a link to News but it opens
Outlook Express.

I know there are some third party ones out there but it really should be
part of the product.

Regards
Dave A

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

<guess>
* Due to the simple fact that Microsoft Outlook is the premiere client of
Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Exchange can house Internet Newsgroups.
* Limited local storage (2GB limit on PST files. Only 16,000 or 65,000 per
folder)
* Threading of newsgroup posts suck in Microsoft Outlook
</guess>

 

[Vanguard]

Tell me if I am going out on a limb but.... why isn't an NNTP news
reader incorporated into Outlook? I know there is a link to News but
it opens Outlook Express.

I know there are some third party ones out there but it really should
be part of the product.

And how much MORE are you willing to pay to Microsoft to add more bloat
to Outlook? If Microsoft sold a version of Outlook without the
newsreader functionality and another version with the newsreader
functionality for, say, $30 more, do you really think that Microsoft
will generate enough revenue to continue marketing that more expensive
but far less used version of their product just so they could lose money
to placate a few non-business-use users? It's not that you want more
bloat in Outlook. It's that you want it for free. You've already got
that with OE. If you really absolutely had a need to view newsgroups
inside of Outlook, I believe there are products that do that as add-ons,
like Newslook ($32), MAPIlabs NNTP for Outlook ($25), and Newsgator
($29). Oops, I forgot, you don't want to pay for it. So what do you do
for work that you give away for free? You're still using Outlook
Express because you're too cheap to go buy a better newsreader. Me,
too. If Microsoft added NNTP support into Outlook and upped the price
by $30 for EVERYONE then a hell of a lot of users would bitch about
paying for functionality they don't need and which is already provided
free via OE. Do any of the PIM (Personal Information Managers), like
Act and others, actually incorporate newsgroups?

Outlook is a PIM that happens to include e-mail because that has become
a viable *business* communications channel. You really think
participating in newsgroups is a primary business activity? I use it
for research and help at work but it is definitely not used when
communicating to Development, Sales, or other departments within my
company and it is definitely not used when communicating to our
customers, suppliers, or anyone else involved with our business. It's
bad enough to get the occasional e-mail with a virus but you want to
worsen the situation by bringing in newsgroups that are rife with
viruses, spyware, and other malware. Outlook is geared for business use
(but which does not preclude for personal use, but the personal-use
market is not where Outlook is being primarily marketed). Newgroups is
for personal use and why you see it in a product geared towards the
personal-use market.

Why does a Geo Metro have a radio/CD player with front & rear speakers
but a Formula 1 race car does not? One was designed for personal
transportation and the other is not. Microsoft couldn't give squat
about the measly sales it might engender, if any, by personal-use buyers
that purchase their Outlook product. They are interested in corporate
sales and so they tailor the product for use in that market as a
business solution. I suppose if a convincing enough case could be
presented that business are in dire need of newsgroups then Microsoft
would reconsider and simply go buy or contract an add-on to add NNTP
support. Yet, I still see corporations *restricting* access to
newsgroups because they do NOT want their employees wasting time there
and because of the security risks.

Yet another case where Microsoft's bad decision to rename Internet Mail
& News to Outlook Express has confused end users simply because a couple
of their products share a common word in their product title. "it really
should be part of the product". Yeah, yet another user who wants more
bloatware while the rest of us want a stable product that does want it
was designed to do.

 

[Dave A]

Wow - I didn't think anyone would have that much to say about it. Thanks for
your thoughts.

I am still running Office 2002 because I saw nothing new in it for me in
Office 2003 and so Microsoft did not get my money. But if I saw a NNTP
reader in Office 200x (where x >= 5) then they would get my money. So I
disagree with your finacial benefit to cost ratio arguement.

I am a software engineer. Reading news groups is a primary business activity
for me. I disagree with you again.

Yet, I still see corporations *restricting* access to newsgroups because

they do NOT want their employees wasting time there and because of the
security risks.

I disagree again. A company like this will have blocked access to that TCP
port and it NNTP will not work. Alternatively, they trust their employees
and will see that NTTP is a tool as useful as the web.

If bloatware is a problem for you, install Win95. Or don't check on that
box when you install the software. You call it bloatware, i call it feature
rich - bring it on!

Regards
Dave A

 

[Vanguard]

Wow - I didn't think anyone would have that much to say about it.
Thanks for
your thoughts.

I am still running Office 2002 because I saw nothing new in it for me
in
Office 2003 and so Microsoft did not get my money. But if I saw a NNTP
reader in Office 200x (where x >= 5) then they would get my money. So
I
disagree with your finacial benefit to cost ratio arguement.

I might, too, except that I doubt Microsoft is going to start bloating
Outlook to provide personal-use features for a product that is primarily
marketed to business. About the only reason that I see Microsoft might
consider adding NNTP is if they finally decided to drop Outlook Express
(and if enough business users wailed about losing the freebie NNTP
client).

I am a software engineer. Reading news groups is a primary business
activity
for me. I disagree with you again.

I'm a software QA lead tester. I use newsgroups quite often. I have
not seen one company consider NNTP an official communications channel
and instead they often restrict it. The NNTP server that our ISP
provided for company use had a very limited number of groups (I was glad
they got rid of all the binary crap) but its retention was so short as
to be worthless for looking up problems. I had to get permission to
tunnel through the firewall to my Teranews and Giganews accounts after
proving my case to my boss, Development, and IT dept. that I was indeed
using it for business purposes. I also recognize that this is NOT the
typical scenario at businesses and NNTP is not considered a authorized
communications channel.

they do NOT want their employees wasting time there and because of the
security risks.

I disagree again. A company like this will have blocked access to that
TCP
port and it NNTP will not work. Alternatively, they trust their
employees
and will see that NTTP is a tool as useful as the web.

Technology companies (involved with computer development or production)
are not the majority of businesses connected to the Internet. What you
and I experience is not typical, but I've seen enough posts and talked
to enough people at other companies, especially with our customers (who
use our software but aren't in the industry) who tell me that NNTP
access is restricted either by complete denial of access or by limiting
group counts and especially retention periods.

"As useful as the web". Well, that entirely depends on what you do for
your job. Someone that doesn't do anything that requires the Net to
perform their job wouldn't need access to the Net, yet companies still
allow access because a certain amount of loss in productivity is
tolerated to keep employees happy and productive. However, companies
can find that counter-productive, like also letting employees gather for
long periods in the hallway and nest around the coffee machine. So they
might let them do the Net but they might also restrict NNTP (because
rarely in non-technical and non-research positions is it needed),
newsgroups can still be access via HTTP using webnews services, often
music and other datastream types are choked or blocked, and they might
use content filtering to restrict where on the Net their employees can
go. Letting employees access the Net can be productive until it's not,
and then the choice is to spend time and money on regulating access or
just deny it. Letting employees run FTP or P2P servers might provide
some convenience, too, but that presents too much a risk and you don't
see many companies allowing that.

If bloatware is a problem for you, install Win95. Or don't check on
that
box when you install the software. You call it bloatware, i call it
feature
rich - bring it on!

Unforunately, disabling or not installing a feature does not eliminate
all the code from within the product that is needed to support that
feature if and when it gets installed/added and enabled. A product that
doesn't have the feature at all will have less code than one that
supports the feature but it hasn't been installed. As I mentioned,
there are already solutions to what you want. Microsoft provided for
extensions to its products by allowing COM add-ins and plug-ins. Rather
than wait for Microsoft to incorporate the "feature" in some future
version, you can have that incorporated feature now. I'd rather fund a
healthier software industry by spreading the wealth than dump it all in
one developer's lap (i.e., Microsoft).

I'm not a Microsoft basher but I'm also don't believe one software
producer can tailor their product to accomodate every potential
customer. You are a case in point. Nothing wrong with competition or
letting someone else fill the void. You could have Microsoft
incorporate it and charge you more for it (and wait for it), or you
could pay someone else (and get it now). If I had to wait until
Microsoft got around to producing the equivalent of the Attachment
Options add-in, I probably won't need that control by then. Am I
supposed to wait until Microsoft gets more involved in anti-spam
solutions rather than use the SpamSource plug-in now so I can report to
SpamCop anything that manages to leak through my anti-spam defenses now?
Sperry has their scheduling plug-in to let you send recurring messages,
but I'm supposed to wait until Microsoft gets around to it? NNTP
plug-ins exist now but you don't want to use them until you get to pay
Microsoft for the same stuff later? There are lots of add-ins to
Outlook and some might do what you want. And if they don't do exactly
what you want, the smaller company producing that plug-in will probably
be more attentive to your suggestions. I just can't figure why you want
to rip the add-in market away from 3rd party developers and bunch it all
in one basket with Microsoft. Even when buying bed sheets, I like the
option of purchasing from different sellers.

Maybe MAPIlabs, Newslook, and Newsgator don't do exactly what you want,
maybe they do, but then you haven't checked. The solution appears to
exist now. It's just not from Microsoft (but then you'll find lots of
stuff added to Windows or to their applications doesn't come from
Microsoft, either).

 

[Don Caton]

too. If Microsoft added NNTP support into Outlook and upped the price
by $30 for EVERYONE then a hell of a lot of users would bitch about
paying for functionality they don't need and which is already provided
free via OE. Do any of the PIM (Personal Information Managers), like
Act and others, actually incorporate newsgroups?

C'mon. First of all, Microsoft generates over $10 BILLION a year from
sales of Office, and Outlook is included in every edition of Office,
even the most basic, stripped down OEM version that's preinstalled on
many machines. If they increased the price of Office by one cent, they
could fund the addition of NNTP into Outlook many times over.

And when have you ever heard of a software company raising the price of
a product and attributing the increase to one particular feature?
Despite its ever-increasing complexity and the cost to produce it,
software remains inexpensive relative to most everything else. You can
buy a copy of Office 2003 Pro for less than you could buy a copy of
WordStar 20 years ago.

Outlook is a PIM that happens to include e-mail because that has become
a viable *business* communications channel. ...

Outlook is a Personal Information Manager. If email isn't "personal
information", what is it?

... You really think
participating in newsgroups is a primary business activity?

Perhaps not for you, but not everyone has the same needs as you do. It
became part of my primary business activity when I started working on a
project with a few other programmers scattered around the world.
Communications between us was via private newsgroups and since I already
used Outlook for all of my other communications, I wanted to read
newsgroups within Outlook. When I couldn't find an add-in for Outlook,
I wrote my own (NewsHound). Unknown to me at the time, there were
others in the works as well. I assume that the other NNTP add-in
authors have customers like I do, so not everyone thinks it is a bad
idea.

bad enough to get the occasional e-mail with a virus but you want to
worsen the situation by bringing in newsgroups that are rife with
viruses, spyware, and other malware.

That's a red herring. Unless you're trolling the binary groups looking
for porn or pirated software, the vast majority of newsgroups articles
are text only, without attachments. And if you should happen to
download some malware, a properly configured virus checker would trap it
anyhow.

... Newgroups is for personal use

If that's the case, then why does Microsoft provide the ability to view
newsgroups in Outlook when used in conjunction with Exchange? Exchange
is certainly not a product designed for personal use.

... Microsoft couldn't give squat
about the measly sales it might engender, if any, by personal-use buyers
that purchase their Outlook product. They are interested in corporate
sales and so they tailor the product for use in that market as a
business solution.

Who really knows what Microsoft gives a squat about? But not every
feature is added simply to drive corporate sales. Do you think
corporations stood in line to upgrade to OL2003 because MS added
pictures to contacts?

Yet another case where Microsoft's bad decision to rename Internet Mail
& News to Outlook Express has confused end users simply because a couple
of their products share a common word in their product title

Now that's one thing that I wholeheartedly agree with you on. With all
of Microsoft's vast resources, they have some of the worst marketing and
the most uninspired and confusing product names in the industry.

should be part of the product". Yeah, yet another user who wants more
bloatware while the rest of us want a stable product that does want it
was designed to do.

What was Outlook presumably designed to do that it doesn't? In any
case, there's no correlation between features (or bloat, if you prefer)
and stability. A simple application can be just as unstable as a
complex one. A product's stability depends on how it was engineered,
not how many features it has.

 

[Vanguard]

C'mon. First of all, Microsoft generates over $10 BILLION a year from
sales of Office, and Outlook is included in every edition of Office,
even the most basic, stripped down OEM version that's preinstalled on
many machines. If they increased the price of Office by one cent, they
could fund the addition of NNTP into Outlook many times over.

And what is their operating costs? Quoting revenue is the ploy of the
foolish. Yeah, they make a lot of money. They also spend a lot of
money. Doesn't matter that it is Microsoft. I don't see you asking
AMD, nVidia, and Intel to give you a free chipset on their mobos, or
Seagate to give you extra capacity on their drives without cost.
Quoting just your earnings is only half the equation (well, actually
less than half because besides expenses you also have taxes, too).

And when have you ever heard of a software company raising the price
of a product and attributing the increase to one particular feature?

Why do you think software developers add new features and then charge
for the upgrades or raise the price? Because of requests from users?
They want to continue the marketability of their product which means to
add new features even if they aren't wanted (but consumers can be conned
into thinking they want them). If they are requested in large enough
numbers then they add the feature knowing it is something they can
generate more revenue for it. Yeah, MS Office comes as a suite but you
can purchase the components separately, and do they cost the same as the
suite? Based on your logic, the price for the suite shouldn't cost more
than, say, Word alone because the rest is just added features to Word.
Add a whole other protocol, NNTP, then IRC, then RSS, then <keep going
through a wishlist>. You don't think all that added codebase is going
to drive up the cost of the product?

Despite its ever-increasing complexity and the cost to produce it,
software remains inexpensive relative to most everything else. You
can buy a copy of Office 2003 Pro for less than you could buy a copy
of WordStar 20 years ago.

So your argument is that the more features that get added then the
cheaper will be the price of the product? Very interesting economics
you suggest. I did not say that over time the codebase for the added
functionality would not be reduced in cost due to volume sales over that
long haul. But new functionality is something saleable. Old code wanes
in its saleability and thus it cannot maintain the same level of
pressure for sales hence its cost comes down. As the old code wanes in
saleability, its price would go down. So if Outlook became staid then
its price would wane. However, by adding new functionality, like NNTP,
IRC, RSS, a superior note function, and so on, then they can, at least,
maintain the price for the product. So instead of the product getting
cheaper over time, it maintains its pricing or increases. How much
would you pay for Wordstar today? The same or more than what you pay
for Word? Not likely. Old code gets cheaper over time, so to retain
marketability you inject new code. So you pay MORE to get the old code
plus the new functionality.

Outlook is a Personal Information Manager. If email isn't "personal
information", what is it?

Do some historical research on PIMs. They didn't have e-mail because
e-mail wasn't big not so long ago. The first time I saw a salesperson
using Act!, it didn't have e-mail. In fact, the first time I saw e-mail
in a PIM was in Outlook (but then I'm no wizard regarding every PIM
application that was ever available and their feature set). As e-mail
became a more viable and trustworthy communications venue then it got
added to PIMs. We aren't in disagreement here and are actually in
vehement agreement: e-mail has become important if not critical for
business. The point was that e-mail was and is seen as a business
communication channel. NNTP is not. NNTP is seen as play time by
employees and thus a waste of company resources but companies realize
that a certain amount on non-productive time is needed for their
employees and may tolerate NNTP, just like they tolerate web surfing
even if not work-related, or personal e-mails, and the coffee machine,
and gathering areas or a nice lunchroom, because it makes their
employees happy. But those equate to expenses to the company so they
have to weigh what expenses they want to incur and to what degree (i.e.,
do they get more than they pay).

Perhaps not for you, but not everyone has the same needs as you do.
It became part of my primary business activity when I started working
on a project with a few other programmers ...

See, you're off talking about a very small segment of the user community
for newsgroups and a very small portion of the corporate community.
Programmers, techs, developers, QA testers, and the like are not the
majority of users out there. Computer technology computers are not the
majority of corporations out there. If only the computer industry used
their own products then I would have to wonder if it would be a
sustainable industry. You don't sell to yourself to generate revenue
and growth.

That's a red herring. Unless you're trolling the binary groups
looking for porn or pirated software, the vast majority of newsgroups
articles are text only, without attachments.

And unless the company uses content filtering or operates their own
newsgroups server that is managed by them to eliminate the binary groups
(or has their ISP provide an NNTP for them with the restrictions) then
how does the company prevent their employees who have NNTP access from
visiting particular newsgroups? Once in, all in, everywhere in.

Obviously we all speak from our own experiences. I have not yet found
good evidence or studies made of all computer-using companies regarding
their attitude and leniency towards NNTP. We sell software to banks and
other financial institutions, schools, government, manufacturers, and
other large companies. At $80,000 a pop plus the cost per seat above
that, we get involved with them in beta testing or implementing our
software, so I've talked to quite a few sysadmins to find out what's
going on in their company. The ones that are computer technology
oriented do permit NNTP access, some freely and some choked, because
they have the local talent and expertise to protect themselves;
otherwise, NNTP is seen as a bane and usually gets blocked or severely
choked.

This is only for direct NNTP access (i.e., using the network news
transfer protocol itself) and not to letting employees access newsgroups
via a webnews interface, like Google Groups or Microsoft Communities. I
don't have enough info from my sysadmin contacts to know their attitudes
toward the webnews interface to newsgroups. I believe Google Groups
doesn't permit ANY attachments when posting nor can the webnews users
retrieve attachments for posts in binary groups. That makes the webnews
interface a much safer means of accessing newsgroups but at the cost of
severely reduced functionality, like not being able to flag threads to
watch, the lack of rules to killfile objectionable posters, no reading
of posts while offline, and several other features only available when
using an NNTP client. Safer access but less potent. I haven't seen
much, if any, resistance towards using webnews like I do against using
NNTP.

And if you should happen to download some malware, a properly
configured virus checker would trap it anyhow.

What, you think new variations or mutations don't get by anti-virus
scanners? Or past IPS'es (intrusion protection systems)? Why do you
think you have to keep downloading new signatures? Why do you think AV
software employs heuristics to catch *behavior* that might be indicative
of a virus or trojan? Because they know they won't catch everything
based on just the signatures of KNOWN viruses and trojan so they also
try to detect based on behavior but obviously the heuristic rules
themselves are limited in what behavior they detect.

If that's the case, then why does Microsoft provide the ability to
view newsgroups in Outlook when used in conjunction with Exchange?
Exchange is certainly not a product designed for personal use.

As noted above, some companies do permit NNTP access. I didn't say all
companies blocked it. My experience with sysadmins is that they
typically hate NNTP and have to take extra measures if it is allowed and
this incurs expense (in time, software, hardware, or other resources
which is often more expensive than any productivity gained therefrom).
You have evidence that indicates corporations actually relish providing
NNTP to their employees? I'd be glad to read it. I can only relate my
experiences in saying what I see happening so obviously it is a biased
opinion since I don't see everything, and neither do you. However, I
don't bias what is typical of corporate attitude and implementation of
NNTP based on my experience in a computer technology company with lots
of computer savvy users around here because that is not the norm. Your
realm of experience is different than mine. So if there has been some
studies regarding corporate NNTP access, how freely access is permitted
or how it is choked, then surely tell me about it.

We've already heard the past rumors that Microsoft was going to dump
Outlook Express. There was a huge wailing by users that wanted to
continue using OE. If Microsoft rolls NNTP into Outlook then they
probably will do that by rolling in the code from OE, if possible, into
Outlook. Then perhaps there would be no cost increment for adding the
new protocol to Outlook. At that point, since Outlook does the e-mail
function that duplicates the e-mail function of OE, and since Outlook
would then do NNTP, too, my guess would be is that if Microsoft puts
NNTP into Outlook then they won't need to continue to lose revenue on OE
and and OE will disappear. So all the freebie OE users lose and have to
find another freebie e-mail client. Microsoft would still be providing
NNTP support but then you would have to buy their commercial product to
get it. Sounds very much like something Microsoft might attempt by
pulling over a portion of the userbase of their free product for which
they generate no revenue, as would any corporate entity. Why would
Microsoft continue to lose on OE when they can make revenue on Outlook
after adding NNTP? Maybe they might continue providing OE but the
impetus to do so would be reduced. SpamNet was free until they decided
to go commerical and pull over that portion of their userbase willing to
pay for the product. Microsoft just changed Hotmail so users will have
to pay and, although some users will abandon Hotmail (or submit to
access only via the webmail interface), some will pay to continue to
have client-side access to their account.

I suppose they could implement NNTP as an add-in but there are already
products to do that. Sure, Microsoft could then contract with one of
those vendors to add NNTP to Outlook via a plug-in but, as you know,
that results in a crippled version of that 3rd party product. If they
bought the company to get the plug-in, they have responsibilities to
their shareholders to somehow offset that expense. They don't buy a
company so they can go out of business. So why pay Microsoft later when
and if they ever add NNTP functionality to Outlook when you can pay for
that now?

 

[Don Caton]

"Don Caton" <[email protected]> wrote in message

And what is their operating costs? Quoting revenue is the ploy of the
foolish. Yeah, they make a lot of money. They also spend a lot of

My point is simply that the product generates revenue, a lot of it, and
they obviously can afford to invest some of that income back in it.
Whether adding NNTP support makes sense for MS or not, I don't know, but
cost isn't a factor. It took me all of 6 months to do it, and that's
with outdated and inaccurate docs on MAPI. MS could do it themselves a
lot quicker. We're talking about thousands of dollars, not millions.
They probably spend more money watering the plants each month.

through a wishlist>. You don't think all that added codebase is going
to drive up the cost of the product?

Clearly it hasn't. Look at today's software and the number of features
they contain, vs. older software. We're generally paying the same or
less for a lot more. Some, maybe even a lot of the new "features" are
of questionable value and serve no other purpose than to generate
upgrade revenue. Nevertless, version 2.0 of product x with 100 features
doesn't cost 10 times more than version 1.0 with 10 features.

business. The point was that e-mail was and is seen as a business
communication channel. NNTP is not. NNTP is seen as play time by
employees and thus a waste of company resources but companies realize
that a certain amount on non-productive time is needed for their

See, you're off talking about a very small segment of the user community
for newsgroups and a very small portion of the corporate community.

My disagreement is simply with sweeping generalizations like that. No
question, some companies see NNTP as unnecessary and certainly they can
(and probably do) block NNTP at their firewalls. I was involved with
Computer Associates for a while a number of years ago, and they thought
email was an unnecessary distraction, to the point of disabling it
during certain working hours. And that is a technology company! It's
amazing that they're still in business.

In any case, NNTP, like email or anything else is a potential tool. For
some it is useful, perhaps even essential, for others it is not. Just
because some companies don't find it useful doesn't make it undesirable
for the world as a whole.

And unless the company uses content filtering or operates their own
newsgroups server that is managed by them to eliminate the binary groups
(or has their ISP provide an NNTP for them with the restrictions) then
how does the company prevent their employees who have NNTP access from
visiting particular newsgroups? Once in, all in, everywhere in.

Doubtful. It is a simple matter to examine an NNTP conversation and
filter out unwanted newsgroups. HTTP proxies do it all the time, and I
would be surprised if the same thing isn't available for NNTP. Any
company large enough to worry about these things almost certainly has
firewalls and proxies and various policies in place to address these
issues.

Obviously we all speak from our own experiences. I have not yet found
good evidence or studies made of all computer-using companies regarding
their attitude and leniency towards NNTP.

Sure. But unless you've undertaken a survey of all corporations, your
evidence and experience, as well as mine, is anecdotal. I don't doubt
that many corporations have no use for NNTP, but that doesn't invalidate
the needs of others who do.

What, you think new variations or mutations don't get by anti-virus
scanners? Or past IPS'es (intrusion protection systems)? Why do you

Of course, but the same applies to email or in some cases, just visiting
a malicious web page. This has nothing to do with NNTP.

We've already heard the past rumors that Microsoft was going to dump
Outlook Express. There was a huge wailing by users that wanted to
continue using OE. If Microsoft rolls NNTP into Outlook then they
probably will do that by rolling in the code from OE, if possible, into
Outlook. Then perhaps there would be no cost increment for adding the
new protocol to Outlook.

I think that's unlikely. If they dump OE and roll everything into
Outlook, then they would have to bundle Outlook with the OS. If MS
removes the email and NNTP client from Windows, that would drive people
to some other free product like Netscape, and I'm quite sure that would
make every blood vessel in Gates' head explode.

get it. Sounds very much like something Microsoft might attempt by
pulling over a portion of the userbase of their free product for which
they generate no revenue, as would any corporate entity. Why would
Microsoft continue to lose on OE when they can make revenue on Outlook
after adding NNTP?

Why does Microsoft do anything? Why do they spend millions on IE and
Media Player? You'd still have to buy Windows anyhow. Aside from the
fact that they don't like to compete on merit, why not make IE and Media
Player a revenue generator by selling them as products?

their shareholders to somehow offset that expense. They don't buy a
company so they can go out of business. So why pay Microsoft later when
and if they ever add NNTP functionality to Outlook when you can pay for
that now?

In a general sense yes, but you're talking about pennies. Microsoft
doesn't report to their shareholders every time they spend a few
thousand bucks. NNTP is trivial to implement. They already have code
to do it in both OE and Exchange. We're not talking about an investment
of million of dollars and man-years.