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Microsoft Works on Search Capabilities
bl8n8r writes "Microsoft is betting millions that someday it will be as well known for search as Google is. Some of its efforts to simplify search on the Internet will soon be in place. The new version of Microsoft's MSN Internet service, available this winter, will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures. For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."
If you've ever visited the MSN portal more than a handful of times in a two-week period, you'd know that:
(1) The search capabilities are horrible; Google is much better.
(2) The "news" story titles are misleading and the stories are frequently repeated over the course of a week; Yahoo! is much better.
Once upon a time, businesses recognized their core competencies and did what they do best, and let other companies handle the things that those companies are good at. Once again, Microsoft chooses not to apply this conventional wisdom to their MSN portal
Remember Microsoft Bob?
William
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
They're throwing around all these inflated statitics about how many people use their service and number of searches and what not. It's all PR! The only people using their search are those that type their searches straight into the IE address bar and that's about 75% of Windows users I'd say. I've never heard anyone claim that MSN is their search engine of choice. Noone actually *chooses* to use MSN search... probably because it's not that good.
They'll have to iron out regular web searching before any of their gadgets and toys will be taken seriously.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
I worked for AllTheWeb.com for a while before we were part of a package sold by FAST Search and Transfer to Overture over the summer. Overture then is gobbled up by Yahoo!, this all after Yahoo grabs Inktomi. The SEO market is in consolidation. Back after we were bought by Overture, there was a lot of speculation that Microsoft would buy out Overture, along with the Yahoo! speculation. In fact, each of the engineers with AllTheWeb.com were contacted by Microsoft regarding employment possibilities. One of my coworkers went to Yahoo! and i'm contracting now.
But I digress...
This is a market in consolidation. Microsoft throwing its' hat in the ring is probably a good thing for the market, like them or hate them. They have the capital to bring new products to market and introduce some more innovation to the search engine space. This IS a good thing. However it's going to cost Microsoft an arm and a leg to get in. Yahoo! bought Overture for the paid inclusion search, Google has it's own products now for sponsored search as we know. Microsoft is going to have to develop this capability in house now, or pay a king's ransom to Yahoo! to get the Overture paid search into their product.
The only advantage Microsoft has is that when you install IE, your home page is always MSN search. When you mistype a URL (outside of VeriSign's squatting), you get sent to MSN search. They'll get a lot of traffic by default.
But it also could re-open anti-trust inquires as well....very interesting.
Microsoft needs to realize that Google's success is on its simplicity and lack of obtrusiveness. MSN's web site is the antithesis of this. If they are spending all of these research dollars to find out that less is better, then it seems like a waste of money to me.
Joe6pack: Sorry, Google, I know you've got a better product and all, but MSN search came with my browser which came with my OS which came with my computer. Switching is too hard, and anyway I heard that MSN search works better with Windows.
So MS illegally uses its OS monopoly to create a monopoly in the browser market, which it will now, in turn, use as leverage to gain an illegal advantage over search/portal competitors.
I guess this is where the DOJ's failure to secure meaningful remedies against Microsoft comes to roost.
Now, times are different. Companies like Yahoo and especially Microsoft are aggressively investing in building the kinds of complex yet user-friendly search capabilities that Google has. Microsoft will soon have a search engine that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of Google's search engine. Google is doomed.
Internet-search tools is not the only market with a low barrier to entry. Another such market is the market for virtual machines. Consider the virtual machine monitor (VMM) sold by VM Ware. It did excellent marketing of a very simple idea -- and a very old idea. VMM was invented by IBM and has been around since the 1960s. The theory of VMM has been well documented and understood in the scientific literature. VMWare took the idea of VMM and simply applied it to the x86 chips. VMWare's genius is in marketing its product as though it were a revolutionary breakthrough. Most of its customers bought the marketing campaign with hook, line, and sinker.
Microsoft is now investing millions of dollars in VMMs and purchased the key VMM technologies from Connectix. Microsoft has succeeded in creating a VMM that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of the VMM sold by VMWare. VMWare is doomed.
Unlike both Google and VMWare, Microsoft has an R&D budget of billions of dollars. Microsoft can defeat both Google and VMWare in their respective markets. Despite public declarations to the contrary, both Google and VMWare are warily aware of Microsoft's R&D might and are working quickly towards an IPO while there is still chance for an IPO. If you buy stock in either Google or VMWare, you might as well just burn the money. It will be worthless.
For example Microsoft bought the set-top box leader - WebTV and everybody thought they would drive everybody else out of business - yet they screwed it up so badly that despite millions of dollars Tivo etc. overtook the former leader WebTV.
Google is successful with a simple concept: Don't be intrusive, carefully place advertisments and respect your visitor.
What Microsoft and obviously you don't understand is that you don't need an RD budget of billions to deliver that.
Microsoft's company philosophy and ethics are contradicting. They would plaster so many ads out there and scew the search results so much that they would open the way for alternative offers. Just look at MSN-search, the "featured" and "advertized" links are barely distinguishible from the rest. (a pale grey tiny text)
Geeks like Google because it doesn't try to do too much for them. Mundanes will probably like a super-powered MSN search because it will do everything for them. The best part is that there is room for both mindsets. Just as IE coming with windows does not prevent people from installing Mozilla or some other browser and using it nigh-exclusively (MSNM client, for example, still runs iexplore explicitly, rather than using the system's default browser) MSN search being the default will not stop you from using Google. Especially if you don't use IE. The fact that IE will be ever more closely tied to the OS in no way changes this.
I don't use MSN search at all any more. Even on the rare occasion I'm using IE (usually at school) and I somehow end up with MSN search results, I don't even look at them any more, I just close them and visit google. Or retype my URL :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's this attitude that kills companies more than any other reason. You must remember that despite Microsoft's attempts, there are competitors that they haven't managed to kill. Intuit is one, despite Microsoft practically giving Microsoft Money away with Windows 95, bundling it in virtually every "home" product they make, and aggressively pricing it. Quicken and QuickBooks still exist and are doing very well.
Should Google fear Microsoft? Who wouldn't? Should they lay down and die because they will inevitably be massacred by the Beast of Redmond? Of course not. Now, should Google IPO because of the Microsoft threat? I doubt it. Not being held to a board of stockholders lets them do things they wouldn't be able to do otherwise like refuse potential revenue streams like pop-up advertisments and pay-for-place search results. The very things that got Google where it is today would be lost if they IPOed and the stockholders started to demand that they maximize their revenue by doing so.
Right now Google has a better product than Microsoft. If they continue to have a better product than Microsoft, there's a good chance they could survive. If they cease having a better product than Microsoft they will die.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.