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Ballmer On Microsoft's Search Goofs
An anonymous reader writes "AP reports on CEO Steve Ballmer's regret over Microsoft's failure to get into the search market early on. Best quote? 'I want to make sure (a user) can't get through ... an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad.' Nice to see they're still user-oriented."
'I want to make sure (a user) can't get through ... an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad.'
I figured that the submitter hacked part of that quote out of the middle, only to find out the original article had it posted that way too!
And the pictures! I usually don't think of Steve Ballmer as evil (just the company he works for), but those pictures make him almost look menacing and demonic.
"Mwa ha ha ha...all your base are belong to us! Now give me your money, and here's your yearly upgrade of office. When's your first born due?"
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
If I'm not mistaken, Steve was referring to an entirely different subject when talking about the ads. He was talking about companies using their advertising budgets wisely, not the fact that he wishes he had google so he could blast Microsoft ads everywhere as the majority of the posters seem to believe.
I don't want to be feeding the troll, but seriously, you don't believe this, do you? IE has a history of breaking every conceivable W3C standard as Microsoft sees fit, and it's only because of Microsoft's monopoly that they can get away with it.
Have you ever tried to make any web page look the same in IE and any other browser? Surely, the very idea of being "the most compatible" is somewhat moot if there's no point of reference. Who (or what) do you think IE is compatible with?
And concerning which browser is "the best", there's always the classic list of 101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot.
Ballmer said Microsoft spends about 12 percent of its media budget on online advertising, and that he orders his staff to "saturate" that market first and foremost.
"I want to make sure (a user) can't get through ... an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad," he said.'
Which is somewhat different from that implied by the submitter; rather than Microsoft wanting to dominate search space, and slapping their ads on everything, it's actually a suggestion that online advertising can be effective, and that companies should spend more of their marketing budget online.
Given the dearth of funding models for many websites, I'm amazed that people are willing to twist an attempt to get more money into advertising online as something more evil.
They already went down that path. The result (or lack thereof) was what prompted MS to dump all the money into their own search technology in the first place. Much like Ford did to Ferrari in the 60's, MS is hoping to out spend Google (which they'll probably succeed in doing).
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Actually, they just did release a toolbar and, unsurprisingly, it's an exact copy of google's, linked to MSN. I'm not going to bother installing to see if it uninstall's google's though...