Memo Outlines Microsoft's Plans

conq wrote to mention a BusinessWeek article that covers some of Microsoft's upcoming web plans. From the article: "Live.com, Microsoft's customizable search-oriented portal, has more than 3 million users and the second-highest Net Promoter score -- a metric showing how many users would recommend the site to others -- of all MSN.com properties, writes Cole. That's good news, since the Live.com portal is the entry point for the first release of its Windows Live Search, the site through which Microsoft hopes to make the big bucks through paid search. Microsoft on Mar. 8 unveiled a slew of features aimed at letting users personalize the way they search the Web."

Comments

Live.com

[PakProtector]

I wonder how much MS shelled out for that domain name?

Re:Live.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft bought the internet, remember? You can visit their new site at http://http/

Re:Live.com

[camcorder]

I doubt that it's too much. They prabably registered "live" brand name, and put a dispute on WIPO to get the domain if it wasn't a live web site or not owned by any other company which has live name registered to them. At those disputes jury easily decide on your side as they get paid by you. That would cost you at most $3-4k for 3-4 inspectors or something, though that amount is apart from lawyer fees. I would not expect MS to pay a cybersquatter tons of money as they are already paying for lawyers tons of money.

Re:Live.com

[bbzzdd]

It used to belong to Live Networks Inc (check Wayback). They are a vendor of streaming media tools. They had the domain since at least 1998.

Re:Live.com

[webzone]

Firefox does an "I'm feeling lucky" search on Google when the address is invalid if I well remember. It turns out that Microsoft is first in the list when you search for that.

Re:Live.com

[Val314]

well... hava you googled for "http"?

http://www.google.com/search?q=http&start=0&ie=utf -8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US :official

first link is to MS, and firefox does a feeling lucky search for this

Poorly disguised shill.

[ozmanjusri]

That article is nothing more than a Microsoft press release. This sort of garbage "informercial" is why blogging is gaining credibility over traditional journalism.

Re:Poorly disguised shill.

[value_added]

That article is nothing more than a Microsoft press release. This sort of garbage "informercial" is why blogging is gaining credibility over traditional journalism.

LOL. And this is different how from what's published by the real deal MS Press? It's never ceased to amaze me how, at their most technical, most all publications read like advertising copy. As to the article, Bill describe his place in the era of live software with

Make no mistake, Windows Live is our strategic bet to change the game and win, while we grow and drive revenue with MSN.com

But on a somewhat related note, a Goldman Sachs analyst discussing Google's acquisition of Writely says:

We disagree with Microsoft's approach of ignoring the consumer market for a hosted solution and leaving the door wide open for Google to come in and establish a presence in the consumer or potentially the small business market... Strategically, it seems like Microsoft should have been more proactive in leveraging its strengths ..."

Maybe the strategy part of their strategic bets needs work?

Re:Poorly disguised shill.

[RobertLTux]

may i point out an exception to that "rule" The SCO Group would love to send a terminator back to remove Pamela Jones before she started groklaw.net Top Ten signs your court cases are going badly 10 you have a blog posting every (public) detail of the case 09 this includes all of your FTC filings 08 you have hacked off two judges 07 and they are talking with each other 06 the guy that cowrote the book on the language says you have no case 05 the guy you payed says you have no case 04 the guy from 6 also worked on writing the OS you are talking about 03 you are fighting IBM (and they are in a Evil Bad and Wrong mood) 02 you are fighting Novell (and they want to Ebay your offices) 01 Bills PIPE fairy just went on vacation adn you are running out of money

A press release is a press release

[wombatmobile]

David Cole, a Microsoft senior vice-president, outlined progress and key objectives for Windows Live in a memo obtained by BusinessWeek Online.

"Memo"? Sounds like some hucksters press release to me. I don't know who Businessweek thinks its is kidding by calling these pronouncements from Redmond anything other than a PR statement.

"And I can assure you the onslaught of upcoming Windows Live services will place us in a strong competitive position and will reestablish our leadership in the industry."

Businessweek and Slashdot pretend that's "news" because...

Anyone want to take a guess?

Re:A press release is a press release

[westlake]

Businessweek and Slashdot pretend that's "news" because...

when the engine picks up speed you don't want to be caught napping on the track.

dead.com

[FishandChips]

When I tried live.com (Firefox on Debian) I clicked on the Safety Center widget hoping for some hot tips but got this message instead: "Oops, we seem to be having a problem with this feed. Please try again later.". I then tried their "Live" searchbox at the top of the page but after a minute of staring at a white screen which just said "Loading ..." I gave up. After that I clicked on tabs which said "News" and "Images" but these also produced a entirely blank if quite restful white screen.

Good to see that things worked just as one would expect from MS. Naturally I would unhesitatingly recommend live.com - my small contribution to Micosoft's prodigious "Net Promoter" score. When folks get back to me saying live.com doesn't work, I'll be suggesting they another website and, preferably, try Mac OS or Ubuntu as well.

Re:dead.com

[Ucklak]

That's what I get too. And what the hell does this mean?

a metric showing how many users would recommend the site to others -- of all MSN.com properties

Everybody that uses MSN would recommend to use live.com or everybody that WORKS at MSN would recommend live.com?

Paid search?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse my ignorance, but paid for by whom? Is that why a picture search for "titties" is blocked by live.com? People going to have to pay to get the good stuff?

haha.

[ikejam]

"Over the next 3-6 months, we'll ship more innovative technology into the marketplace than during our entire 10-year history,"

Live.com might fail, but that statement might turn out to be truer than MSoft will ever care to admit.

objectively thinking ofcourse, there's almost zero chance of live.com not being atleast moderately successful, even with all the news of Google acquiring Writey etc etc

Re:haha.

[dioscaido]

Even as an MS employee I've always considered the MSN group to be pretty lame, and produce lame products. But I gotta tell you, they have a fire in them right now that is palpable. They suddenly have an influx of real talent, tons of research resources, and a determination to outshine Google. Some of the stuff they have on the pipeline is geniunely interesting. Anyway, take that for what it's worth. They may still come out with lame products and fail spectacularly. But MSN '05-'06 is definitely not classic MSN, which is good for everyone.

Re:haha.

[spisska]

Even as an MS employee I've always considered the MSN group to be pretty lame, and produce lame products. But I gotta tell you, they have a fire in them right now that is palpable. They suddenly have an influx of real talent, tons of research resources, and a determination to outshine Google. Some of the stuff they have on the pipeline is geniunely interesting. Anyway, take that for what it's worth. They may still come out with lame products and fail spectacularly. But MSN '05-'06 is definitely not classic MSN, which is good for everyone.

That may be, but for as long as I can remember (think MS-DOS 1.0), Microsoft has had a sudden "influx of real talent" and "stuff in the pipeline that is genuinely interesting".

Yet somehow all of these groundbreaking ideas are always six months away, even when competitors are already producing them.

Anybody remember the last time MS retooled MSN search? Has anyone noticed anything really groundbreaking about Live(TM)? (Nonsensical, redundant scrollbars are not groundbreaking) How about anything slightly groundbreaking?

Whatever you think about Google, when something leaks from them it really is a leak. When something 'leaks' from MS, it is a carefully orchestrated maneuvre (do you really think their new mini tablet would have gotten press for two weeks if it hadn't been 'leaked'?). This is because Google never tells you about what they will have in six months, they invite you to beta test it today.

No matter what Google (or Yahoo, or Netscape, or Oracle, or Apple, or . . .) is beta testing today, MS will always have something better in six months. Because they have some really talented people with fire in them working on it, and boy will it be something. And it will be ready any day now.

Competition is good

[NigelJohnstone]

Well competition is good, it will simply drive Google & Yahoo to do better. Much as I love Google, they make choices I think suck sometimes...

e.g. [bmw autohaus finden] in Google.de use to pull up BMWs dealership finder before Google penalized them, BMW were forced to remove the doorway keywords, now it brings up nothing useful. Way to go Google.

Even if its competition from Microsoft, it will be a good thing, as long as MS doesn't try it usual anti-trust crap.

Re:Deja-Vu

[dingen]

You mean the "beta"-tag under the logo?

Huh???

[dskoll]

Live.com doesn't even work for me. I'm trying Firefox 1.5 on Debian, and when I enter a search term, all I get is "Loading..." and nothing else.

Has anyone actually made it work under Firefox on Linux?

Re:Huh???

[metroplex]

The same happens to me on a mac using Safari 1.3.2 (v312.5). That's silly.

Business as Usual

[thunderpaws]

Paid "press release" infomercials like this are business as usual for Microsoft. Nothing new in the MS business model except some names, terminology, and so-called "new" technologies. The sense I get from my customers, co-workers, and overall tone of discussions, bolgs and forums, etc. is an incredible lack of excitement in anything Microsoft related. The article left me with a feeling that MS is scrambling to catch up while trying to strike a spark of enthusiasm in a world that is growing more and more skeptical on a daily basis.

paid search?

[spiritraveller]

That's good news, since the Live.com portal is the entry point for the first release of its Windows Live Search, the site through which Microsoft hopes to make the big bucks through paid search.

This is a joke right?

Good ole MSOFT

[JRGhaddar]

Live.com (as it appears to me) is just an attempt at copying everything that is popular on the web. A Favorites Section ala del.icio.us (yahoo), Personalized Simple Desktop that the user can Customize (this has been around, but google made it simple) Mail / IM integration (Google/Yahoo feature)

I don't see anything as new except for the "Security Center" which obviously will be some antispyware/malware/virus thing, however I don't necessarily consider MS the authorities on security but more like the person who left the window unlocked in the first place.

The hook for Microsoft is obviously vista. This portal thing is going to communicate directly with every user (Similar to Google Desktop). Vista will also do everything to guide the user into using that site as an extension of the O.S. The new IE will make sure of that. Makes sense that Microsoft Office Online will probably be integrated somehow into this system as well.

I do think that this is a dramatic improvement for MS, and they are catching up quickly; but they don't want to take the lead. They like exactly where they are.

FTFA: One such service is a click-per-call capability that will let users connect to businesses via Web-based calls by clicking on MSN search links. Sources tell BusinessWeek Online that the capability will be unveiled the week of Mar. 13.

Another example of following google's lead.

This really a great example of a Drafting Marketing Strategy. It's been no secret that MS lets others innovate, and quietly absorbs all of their breakthroughs and then corners the market with their massive resources. Firefox being another in a long list of victims from this strategy.

Slashdot Survey

[16K Ram Pack]

Has anyone, including the most non-techie friends of yours said to you to check out live.com?

Have you read a blog, beyond Microsoft fanboys saying how great live.com?

I get recommended all sorts of sites by word-of-mouth from friends, and no-one has even mentioned live.com.

the clue is in the techno marketing babel

[rs232]

"Make no mistake, Windows Live is our strategic bet to change the game and win .."

translation: We can't win on technology so we are going to change the rules.

'Windows Live Local search.. "is surpassing our competition with industry-leading technology"'

translation: We produce industry-leading technology despite the fact that we are playing catchup with Google and our sucessive desktop product adds little to the user experience.

"Over the next 3-6 months, we'll ship more innovative technology into the marketplace than during our entire 10-year history,"

translation: We actually shipped innovative technology in the past ten years. At least we'de like to pollute the record with this wish-fulfillment fantasy.

"I know we've spent the last few years coming from behind, but we've truly turned a huge corner," Cole says. "

I thought that corners only came in obtuse and acute angles. How can you logically be coming from behind while turning a huge corner. Why is a marketing blurb worthy of mention on slashdot?

Re:How Microsoft does everything

[heson]

Yur first step is hiding the details, its:
1. Steal - ehm, I mean Embrace - someone elses idea, sculpt a clone in dog crap.

Net promoter score

[AnotherDaveB]

I'd never heard of a "Net promoter score", so I asked Google, and it pointed me to another Businessweek article.

...companies measure customer loyalty by asking one simple question rather than relying on lengthy satisfaction surveys: "On a scale of zero to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend us to your friends or colleagues?"

"net promoter scores," ... [are] ... the difference between the percentage of customers who give high responses ("promoters") and those who give low ones ("detractors"),

Live Mail to grow from 750K to 20M in 3 months?

[yuna49]

Windows Live Mail, the new version of Microsoft's flagship Hotmail e-mail, is hosting 750,000 users, and the company hopes it will host 20 million by June, according to the memo.

Isn't it reasonable to assume that all this means is that all the Hotmail users will be automatically converted over to Live Mail in June? Doesn't anyone at BusinessWeek have the smarts, or the chutzpah, to ask whether this is even plausible?

Are there any reliable estimates of the number of free mail users out there? 20 million seems to me like an awfully large chunk of the entire market.

Re:dead.com poor support

[Skreems]

No offense, but I work in web development and people like you are a royal PITA :-)

I understand that you may not think javascript is completely necessary, but you're asking for access to interactive applications while at the same time demanding that you not be forced to use an up-to-date application runner. If a site is just about giving you information, then great, don't make javascript a requirement. But stuff like live.com with the gadgets and whatnot is not just about displaying text; it's meant to be an application-style experience. Depending what the page does, it's a huge amount of extra work to make it work scriptless, and only benefits a very small percentage of users.