Google a "Wake-Up Call" For Microsoft

wooha points out coverage of a talk Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, gave at a Goldman Sachs conference in Las Vegas. Ozzie said that watching Google rake in advertising revenue was a wake-up call within Microsoft. He said Microsoft plans to do more than simply follow Google's lead by creating Web-based versions of desktop programs or duplicating its search and advertising model. (Despite Microsoft's massive investment in promoting and improving Web-based search, the company still has less than 10% of search engine market share, compared to Google's ~50% and growing.) Ozzie, who has only made a few appearances since his promotion last June to replace Bill Gates as CSA, told analysts and investors that he has been laying the groundwork for programmers across the company to build Internet-based software.

Comments

Always too little too late

[JoeCommodore]

As the story states Microsoft is after the advertising revenue, not really actually interested in providing the rich content that google strives for.

There is where the difference lies, Microsoft does not see this or many of the other markets it shoves it's foot into as a "we can do this better because we care", it's more like "hey, there's someone making money on this, lets do it too!" and that's how they approach it. They make a shortlist of competitive features and try to cover those.. and little else. Then talk the talk of what people are saying about thier competition ("we're secure, you can share, we're open, we got what you are looking for. etc.")

Microsoft hasn't been innovating for years, it's more like they play a continual game of catch-up.

Re:This is news?

[skoaldipper]

> Does anyone not believe Google is a wakeup call to Microsoft?

Yahoo is the only search engine that appears to be holding Google off.

Does anyone not believe Yahoo is a wakeup call to Google? Why have all others declined while yahoo's cleats are so firmly entrenched at the 3 yard line? That should at least give google inc some pause for concern. I say the reason is in small part because yahoo mail is so popular - driving so many users to their other services in part from clickity click convenience alone. Personally, I still find myself using yahoo mail exclusively over gmail. That thing ever gonna move from beta?

Re:Moo

[hey!]

Why should this be surprising?

The key is that consumer != user.

When your IT department won't buy you the laptop you want, it's because the consumer is them and the user is you, and in this case you have different interests.

I was working professionally in IT in the era 1983 - 1995, the rise of Microsoft, and this was a very common scenario: senior managers got Macintoshes, everyone else got PCs. The reason was that senior managers had enough clout to steer the acquisitions. The argument that the incremental value of equipping two users with PCs was greater than the incremental value of equipping one user with a easier to use system didn't cut it when you were talking to the boss.

With the exception of the people in accounting, nearly everybody who saw both systems side by side, and was not already a user of one or the other platform, nearly everybody was more attracted to the Mac. We even had TCO data showing that Macs were cheaper. But nobody wanted to admit that training was a cost, and nobody knew how to measure differences in productivity, so the equip two users with a PC vs. one with a Mac carried the day. I was there, and I saw it happen.