When WebTV first hit the scene, most of us that had already been on the Internet for a number of years dismissed it as a gimmick that would likely fade into obscurity as a clever idea wrapped in a less-than-compelling implementation. That is to say, it kind of sucked. Sure, it was cheap, but the savings came at the cost of a decent web browser with modern features, and web pages looked absolutely awful. We at AtAT are less than thrilled with any device that relies on the low-quality display of a television to show text to the user, probably due to all those hours spent getting headaches while using a TV as the monitor for Atari 1200XL's and Apple ]['s; when Digital TV becomes the standard it'll make more sense.

But all that hasn't prevented WebTV from becoming popular enough to keep from getting canceled. You may recall that Microsoft liked the product so much, they bought the company. And Microsoft's sizeable coffers have kept the product alive long enough to gain new features and new life. The thing is, at least one of those "features" is so Microsoftian it's practically got Bill Gates' personal autograph on it: according to a ZDNet article, WebTV devices keep records of every show their users watch, and every web site they visit, and then quietly upload that information back to the WebTV company every night. WebTV has "a whole department that does nothing but look at the information," says WebTV's president Steve Perlman.

Tom Rheinlander, an analyst at Forrester Research, Inc., cautions that WebTV users may not even know that their actions are being tracked, and if they are aware, that they may not "understand the extent of this. It's recording everything they do. This is like having a video camera on them 24 hours a day." And remember, whatever info WebTV has, Microsoft has. That all being said, we rarely see any people tuning into AtAT via WebTV devices, but then, if you've got WebTV, you probably don't have a Mac-- and if you don't have a Mac, why would you watch AtAT? Still, if you've got friends or family using WebTV, you may want to make sure they understand that Big Bill is watching.