On June 25, 2006 Scoble says:
What happened to WinFS?The Web killed it.
The Web is how people use computers now and will in the future. Steve Gillmor loves to say Office is dead. Well, that has yet to be seen (whether Office dies or not is in that team's hands) but WinFS was a technology that'd have a hard time getting going because it's anti Web. It'll be interesting to see if this stuff comes back in a Web way. Ray Ozzie to the rescue!
On October 28, 2004 Baus says:
Microsoft can't force relevance into the desktop. This is also why WinFS on the desktop is a waste of time. Consumers don't want to manage their contact database schemas on the desktop. They want google to do it for them. And businesses are already using centrally managed LDAP servers. WinFS has no marketable advantage.