My guess as to Microsoft's involvement with a similar offering would be ASP.Net via the DLR. I could see their marketing leaning towards not just the C# crowd,

My guess as to Microsoft's involvement with a similar offering would be ASP.Net via the DLR. I could see their marketing leaning towards not just the C# crowd, but also the IronPython and IronRuby crowds. It would be a "we'll host your DLR applications for x dollars a month", not a free offering. They would likely offer deep discounts to students and have lots of other programs to drive the cost of the application down. Microsoft already has an online offering for data, namely SQL Server Data Services (http://www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices/default.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/sql/dataservices/default.mspx). Given their past trends, they will continue to push this offering. Remember that MSFT has a different strategy than Google or Amazon; they target corporations while Amazon and Google tend to like to target smaller groups, single developers or start-ups. This may change in the future as MSFT becomes more acquisition oriented, but only time will tell.