Microsoft Takes Aim At Google 576
TiredOfCrap writes "People are underestimating what Microsoft is doing with search technology, says Bill Gates.
The head of the software giant told the BBC that its ambition is to be bigger than Google in search.
"
WOOWHOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
-Rick
Sounds like Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like Microsoft alright. They are not trying to create a better search engine, they are trying to "beat the competition". Haven't they learned yet this rarely works?
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:2, Insightful)
No news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It'll never catch on... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because you usually get the problem via Microsoft, and the answer via Google. ^_^
All bark, no bite (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it just me, or is Microsoft "all bark, and no bite" lately?
They're going to do this, they're working on that, they're going to be bigger than [insert market leader here].
I'd like it if Microsoft would just STFU and show me the goods, rather than keep telling me how great they'll be tomorrow.
This is news? (Score:3, Insightful)
That wouldn't be so bad if their preferred method of getting there weren't borrowed from Tanya Harding.
Re:So like everything else ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Embedded in Windows: you betcha!
Good enough: yeah...it takes too much effort to do otherwise.
The only real uncertainty is how well they can pull this off on the internet; a place which has proven to be a difficult area for MS in many ways.
Re:Basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
Leave it to Microsoft to miss the point... (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason Google is on top is NOT because of the best search engine technology. It was because Google presents a non-tyrannical alternative. Gates can't see that though, because he's too wedded to his tyrannies...
Hmmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
"We are stronger than ever because we have a research lab in Cambridge, we have one now in China, one in India and that is where the top problems in computer science are going to be solved."
Apparently, none of the top problems in computer science are going to be solved in the United States.
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, they can't buy Google (did I just say that?) so they will try to 'compete' in an area where they just aren't prepared. They lack the culture to really do anything like that from what I can see. Google's way is really like an amoeba... little projects everywhere -- the good ones grow and fill with resources, the others disappear. Microsoft's is just a bit too carnivorous and aggressive by comparison.
Competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Competition is good. Even you anti-Microsoft pundints will have to admit, this will only make Google have to work harder ;)
Sure. If Microsoft had the reputation for being a fair competitor I would agree with you. My guess is that they will resort to their traditional sleezy tactics to impede Google and flog an inferior search capability using monopoly assets (like IE, Windows, Office, MSN). Microsoft is now firing at random. They are clearly off balance.
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, Microsoft search can be adless (or charge less for ads) and hyperfast thanks a server farm 100x Google's size. Hell, they can throw in prizes for prominent users, whatever. They can quite simply outspend their competators. Not saying that's what they will do, but it's what they can do. They can do so until Google no longer exists, and then they own the mindshare and can relax. They've done it before a hundred times.
Plus, they can integrate it into their ownership of the OS and browser markets.
Google has neither an endless mountain of cash, nor a 90% of the browsers, nor 90% of the desktops.
The simple fact is that MS does not have to win - they can lose, and lose by a wide margin (in terms of profits) until Google is starved out of business. And then they win anyways by default.
Re:Basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as there is a legacy of 10+ years of games and media on Windows, I'm afraid that there is always going to be a Windows OS somewhere in my life. However, if the OS were the only bit of Microsoft software that I had to worry about, and if MS took a role more or less equivalent to a BIOS developer and otherwise dropped out of userland, that would be a good thing.
Ultimately, Google is about an entirely different metaphor. It's post-OS viewpoint, and post-file-system. Once you start "working Googlishly" - using Google desktop, Picasa, etc. - things like organizing your file system heirarchically start to feel archaic and limited. If you wanted to get philosophical about it, it's a move from a 'great chain of being' metaphor towards work and information to one of a distrubuted network of nodes that don't have strict set-theoretical relationships.
The emperor has no clothes (Score:3, Insightful)
One of Google's key success factors has been their open source approach to delivering and developing their product offerings. The very foundation of Google is Open source backed which is the antithesis of Microsoft.
Even if MS engineers came up with a whiz bang search technology, they would force their search division to write it in
I do say though that it "feels" like we are finally living in some interesting times again in IT where there are some serious players competing in the industry...
Microsoft might fail. (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, Google will continue to evolve their ui to be even more simple and easier to use and add new technology as new services instead of putting it all on the search page.
How much better than Google does MS Search have to be to start pulling over users from Google? Does MS have any new technology that Google don't have access to? I don't think so.
"He admitted Apple had had the biggest bite out of the digital music business with its iPod and iTunes success, and wished that Microsoft and its device partners had a bigger share.
But he stressed that, in most part, Microsoft was not about making devices.
"Our success is overwhelmingly greater than theirs [Apple's] is - they are learning from us every step of the way and we are learning from them," he said."
Huh. How can their success be greater when the iTunes Music Store has a 85% market share?
Re:Sounds like Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
It amazes me that you are so blinded by your hate for MS that you could actually believe this, never mind post it. I can only hope you meant it sarcastically.
MS is the most successful software/computer company in the history of the world. Their closest competitors are half their size. Ya, MS has no idea what works... they got to be the biggest company in the world by luck.
I'm sure there will be lots of funny posts saying "ya they broke the law blah blah blah". Bundling IE and Windows Media didn't make windows the most popular OS in the world. It may have made IE and Windows Media the most popular, but not Windows. They didn't bundle Office, and it isn't cheap, yet it is still the most popular office software in the world. What's your excuse for that one?
What blows my mind even more is people modded this at 3 and insightful (when I wrote this). I guess that's
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Get a f'n clue Bill - I don't want MS (or anyone else) to be the only name in my household and workplace.
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:4, Insightful)
For some reason, the current method of measuring how good a search engine is, is how many pages it returns, not the quality of the pages returned. It used to be I could find what I was looking for in the first page of hits. That day is long gone.
Re:a vision through cataracts (well, he IS aging) (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a hint: power to weight ratio. As the original poster said the pcs of today are stronomically more powerful than ever before but at the same time the amount of weight they have to move (the OS) has also increased. Why? Because either it's a feature or it's part of the OS. Look at the requirements for Vista. Why not just go out and see if you can get a used render farm from Pixar to run that monster.
If Gates and Company would focus on streamlining things then the ability of a pc to do more wouldn't be so compromised. Yes, that means they will have to stop backwards compatibility for the oldest programs out there but that's a sacrifice which will have to be made.
On a final note, just because Microsoft wants to be bigger than Google doesn't mean they'll be better. As a poster up the page a bit lamented, trying to find an answer to a Microsoft problem on Microsofts own site is practically a death march. Until they can clear up that mess of a search process, let alone their useless MSN search, Google has nothing to fear no matter how big Microsoft gets.
Microsoft search experience (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless they start from scratch and implement some kind of keyword search, instead of the current random result generator they are using in their MSDN Library, I don't think Google has much to worry about.
Re:Basically... (Score:2, Insightful)
Effectively, yes. The internet and associated protocols, data structures etc are becoming more and more important, and the underlying OS less and less important - you can do a lot now (email, edit notes, images etc, dispatch compute jobs etc) with a web browser without caring about the underlying OS.
Web browsers currently are limiting. Many user interface aspects of web browsers suck, therefore so do any applications which rely on the browser for user interface.
But gradually standards are emerging which provide software infrastructure for web applications, e.g. the Google Maps thing. I guess Java is too slow to be the infrastructure, and the standard Java interface libraries are also a but weak for GUIs. Google are producing some of this infrastructure, which might end up as a kind of middleware OS. Some of it might end up in the browser itself; there was a rumor a while ago that Google were writing their own browser - I think that is likely.
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Leave it to Microsoft to miss the point... (Score:2, Insightful)
this is WHY I choose google over every other search Engine.
M$ can't without...
Users don't pay for searches (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it's possible for Microsoft search to trounce Google, because there is no ability to wage an effective price war. That effectively takes the most successful MS strategy off the table. Even with obscene R&D money at their disposal, they haven't been able to make a profit with X-Box. How are they supposed to make a profit on a service end users don't ever pay for? Google almost never fails to find what I'm looking for. What is Microsoft going to find that Google misses?
Can anyone name areas where MS failed? (Score:4, Insightful)
- File and print took 5-10 years, but they own that.
- Word and Excel's initial releases were "suboptimal", but they own that.
- Web browser market is a similar story
- Exchange's first release followed a similar path. they may not own messaging, but at ~50% and climbing, they're well on their way.
similar stories in other markets.
What impediments are there to MS owning search? maybe not this year, but 5 years from now. Sure Google has cash now, but so did Netscape.
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because we all know Google never blocks anyone. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963132.html [com.com]
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's definitely not true that Microsoft doesn't have to win, either. In order to starve Google out of business, they'd have to get the vast majority of users to use their search by default rather than Google's, and if they manage to do that, then they actually *have* won.
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly.
This is where I see microsoft being able to get an advantage. Remember, regardless of any monopoly considerations microsoft's other tactic is to go after the developers.
I could easily see them coming up with a high developed useful api to their search system/appliances. They could easily integrate the whole deal into practically everything they make. Imagine an active-directory aware exchange/sharepoint/office integrated search appliance running on an api built into visual studio.
Do I think they can actually beat google in search, no. Google gets too much in the way of ad revenue based on being the best search engine (and thus the de-facto standard). At the same time I don't think they need to beat google in search. All they have to do is adequate search and product integration. This is a big deal, and will probably be a much bigger fight for google than most people here on slashdot expect.
There are too many selling points for this to think that the only way to attack it is "beat google at search results".
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fine to have ambition, but Microsoft seems to have let a competitor get the upper hand to such a degree that the name "Google" is becoming to search technology what Coca-cola is to carbonated drinks. In fact, I'd contend that Google is aleady there and that anything short of a total disaster is going to render any other search portals, Billy Gates' mighty MSN Search among them, a small time player.
It's strange, because a few years ago I would have thought something like KDE or Mac-OSX would have been the MS-killer, but Google has shown the way to take on Microsoft, via the web itself. Google's got the holiest of holies; brand recognition, and it's going to use that to push out web apps of all kinds. Microsoft is in a game of catch-up here, and not only is it currently losing the race, it isn't yet even in the damn stadium yet.
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:4, Insightful)
Relevance tuning of search engines is not easy at all. Errors like these creep up all the time. If you want some background info on the inner workings of MSN Search, and why errors like these happen, see Robert Scoble's somewhat geeky but very interesting video interview [microsoft.com] with two MSN Search Guys (it's an hour long interview).
Re:a vision through cataracts (well, he IS aging) (Score:3, Insightful)
If his goal was "make himself fantastically rich and the company one of the most well-known on the planet", yeah, well done.
If his goal was "make computers work better", well, perhaps he shouldn't have been so ruthless at destroying the competition. There simply isn't a way around the fact that, in a capitalist society, if a company is to continually improve its products (rather than just slap a new coat of paint on and call it "all new"), there is no substitute for the concentration it gets from having competition.
Re:Google has smarter people (Score:5, Insightful)
It's little wonder that Ballmer's throwing psychotic hissy fits. There's a real live Windows-killer on the horizon for the first time in over a decade.
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:4, Insightful)
Year is 1995 AD. The only web browser in the world is Netscape and Microsoft is working on Internet Explorer 3.0 which is not going to get any market share.
Microsoft is good at playing catch up. It is one of the very few things it is very, very good at.
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:3, Insightful)
only when they can use their number 1 weapon: abuse of desktop monopoly. otherwise they suck, hence their inability to deal with Google or the iPod.
their only other weapon is throwing loads of money at the problem, like the xbox. unless they're about to start paying people to not use Google, that's not much use.
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, in part the fact that MS's own technology is being turned against it (Internet Explorer, scripting, etc). The other is that Netscape was, at the time, not a free browser, and it was MS's planting IE free of charge with Windows that did MS in.
I suppose Microsoft could respond with either trying to break Google pages in IE or with some underhanded agreement that forced all retailers to use MSN.com as the home page, but this isn't the mid-90s any more. I doubt very much that MS could play the same dirty trick, and if it did, Google's financial resources must surely by now greatly exceed Netscape's at the time.
I'm not even saying MS couldn't come up with a better product, just as Pepsi could come up with a far better cola than Coke. But what neither MS or Pepsi will ever have is the brand name recognition associated with Coca Cola or Google's market spheres. It can't give away MSN to undercut Google. If it tried the old dirty tricks, it seems pretty likely that the courts would be involved again, and I doubt even Gates is brave enough to test those waters again.
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Microsoft is not a real innovator, it is destined to always be chasing its competitors. In the past it has had some victories but those hey days are gone now that it has been convicted of abusing its monopoly powers and has its hands somewhat tied.
The other aspect of this situation of Microsoft vs. Google is that Google has been redefining the playing field over and over again in rapid time. This race is a relay race where the Google team is on the 8th relay and Microsoft is still trying to get to relay #1 - web search, purple in the face and panting.
Besides, even if Microsoft did manage to kill Google (which I think is highly unlikely), the wheels have been set in motion. The open source community and other competitors are also carrying their own torches. Maybe that's why Microsoft has been trying to get in bed with large web companies lately - so it can stay in the game.
Anyway, I think it's pretty funny for Gates to site his ambitions as something he is bringing to the competitive table. They've had years to bring their web technologies into mainstream use and have failed to do so. I think their "we want it all", "open source hackers need haircuts" attitude is costing them big time. Adapt or die.
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:2, Insightful)
Google isn't a search engine company... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft thinks google is a search engine company and a website then they have really missed the boat.
Google is an advertising company. Google makes more money on AdSense than on AdWords. Google won't get rid of google.com anytime soon but the reality is that the search engine was just a platform for eyeballs (even if only in hindsight) to show ads and to build a massive and intelligent advertising platform. -david
Re:Bland ambition? (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is still the best, but their lead over other search engines isn't as large as it used to be. A better search engine than Google doesn't exist, but it could, and if it ever does I think you'll be surprised at how fickle their users really are, and quickly the new meme becomes "Google is so 2005. They're over."
Evolution over survival of the fittest (Score:4, Insightful)
But not by innovating. Their comeback tactics have always been marketing and economics.
First there was personal computer OS and applications. Make MS-DOS, Windows and Office a good enough OS and spread it using an ubiquitous platform on the rise. Make people, the ordinary but many people, afford them. There goes UNIX or OS/2 as Microsoft takes over the desktop. There was more money in the collective pocket of the little people than in what you could get from corporations, and they got it.
Then there came the Internet and the Web. Make Explorer a good enough browser and give it away for free. Bundle it with your OS so people never care there's an alternative. There goes Netscape.
Then here comes their 3rd big challenge, and I don't know what it is. If I did I'd be famous, or sought after by big money. It has to do with mobility, and distributed computing, and online services, perhaps. But it's here and Google is here and this time Microsoft doesn't seem to find that one thing to take over. It seems to be something that cannot be taken over.
This requires a fundamental change of strategy and I don't think Microsoft can do that. For once, they can't just throw their weight and money at the problem, and there's no catch or moment they can exploit, because they missed the train.
They are not alone. Let's not forget that the Google way of doing things has been a shocker for most of the IT world. I've always wondered why, since there are so many corporations out there with so much freaking money, they seem to produce so little. What the hell are they doing with all the dough and resources? Sure, we're getting new and better stuff, but sometimes it just shines through the cracks that it's not nearly what it should be.
Yet Google throws it's weight at furious innovation. It brings out new stuff weekly, for God's sake. It hires all the greatest minds, and they are eager to go with Google, because it's what they always truly wanted, furious innovation for the sake of it.
It's not like Microsoft isn't trying. They push out all these things as fast as they can think of them: IE7 with decent capabilities, XAML and XForms and Avalon,
I don't know why they can't shake it. Maybe they really have grown too beaurocratic for their own sake and can't react fast enough. I'm sure that Gates and the top dogs see all this pretty clear. And there's still nothing groundshaking but empty promises, and time passes and more innovation floods IT from other sources.
They still have Windows and Office and Explorer, for now, but how long is it going to last? The day the PC starts going and something new comes up, they're all gone.
Re:WOOWHOO! (Score:3, Insightful)
Internet Explorer.
Hotmail.
Xbox.
XP CD burning.
Media Player.
And those are just the ongoing money-losing projects, and not the products they've given away for free until the competition was all dead and then immediately made their offering disappear. You remember stacker? Or zip folders? Of course not.
I know he's not CEO anymore (at least not in title), but Mr. Gates refuses to lose at *any* competition. It's not about profit to him, it's about beating the other guy. He poured billions of dollars into IE, giving it away for free to the you and I, and bribing ISPs to switch until Netscape was crushed, then let it languish.
Microsoft does not operate in any rational way when it comes to competition, and it doesn't have to.
Re:Google (Score:3, Insightful)