The "Bing" outing

Ok. Microsoft is out with its own search engine, oops, they call it a decision engine – Bing.

There will be inevitable exploration of the meaning of the moniker. (Bing has a certain ring to it. It's much better, of course, than the boring "Live Search.") Plus there is the bigger question of whether Bing will make a dent in Google's dominance. But search for clues to another issue Bing brings up: Will it end the Microsoft-Yahoo search flirtation?

Anyways, Bing seems like it would be more useful than a Google or Yahoo search. If you're searching for something you'd like to buy, for example, Bing theoretically will serve up reviews, as well as places to buy the item and related accessories, laid out in a prettier and more organized way than just a simple vertical list of links. On a whole, a big positive for Microsoft: The depth of the searches seems to offer more opportunities for ad revenue.

Of course, people think simple is best, which is part of why Google's so successful. Early impressions suggest Bing will lure some people who want to achieve a specific goal when doing a search, but that users' trust in Google to bring them the most relevant results in the most basic of manners won't wane. The trick will be to get people to think of Bing, too, when they think they might want an enhanced search. Microsoft will be spending a lot of money on the Bing branding campaign, take CEO Steve Ballmer’s word.

So this brings us to what this means for the long-running Microsoft-Yahoo partnership possibility. Is it still going to happen? After all, would Microsoft invest so heavily in Bing if it really thought a deal with Yahoo was imminent?

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Speculation time?

When stock prices take the kind of beating that we're witnessing, the emergence of potential bargains always leads to a sort of fantasy league for takeover speculation, in which analysts and pundits play at making matches between the vulnerable and their possible suitors. These hypotheticals should always be taken well salted, but they still can make for interesting thought exercises.

The player is Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, who gave fresh legs to a possibility -- that Microsoft might snap up RIM. The logic - Microsoft would have its own smartphones to compete with Apple's iPhone and the devices running on Google's Android platform.

Peter Misek feels RIM is a massive strategic fit for Microsoft and they have a standing offer to buy them at $50 (a share). RIM's shares traded at close to $150 just a few months ago, but stock price slides so fast lately and it's within a few bucks of that offer. The way things are going, that's hardly a stretch as it would make the deal worth just over $28 billion, and Microsoft is flush enough to pull it off without having to tap the credit markets. The question is whether MSFT really feels compelled to get into hardware wars or if it's satisfied to compete on the platform side with Windows Mobile. Neither company graced the speculation with a comment.

Meanwhile, up at RIM the folks I guess are trying to stay focused, getting the just unveiled iPhone competitor launched ("BlackBerry Storm") and as rumor has it, they are already working on the next two generations.

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Where Microsoft scores over Google...

...it's a war !

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If you wanna see how wartime Georgia looks, don't go to Google Maps, at least for now. At the moment, it is no more than a blank slate. When the war broke out, some folks noticed this for the first time and suspected that Google had removed the map data for some reason. Not so, says Product Manager Dave Barth. It's just that Google wasn't happy with the map data it could come up with and has been holding off until it gets something better. User feedback has now convinced the company that some data is better than no data, said Barth, and updates are in the works.

Microsoft's Live Search Maps is a much better bet, right now.

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I would fire Ballmer for a different reason

So with Gates out of the gate, let’s fire Ballmer?

Bill Gates was a geek when he started out. He went on to build a monster. Now by the end of this month, he is about to call it quits handing over the reins to Steve Ballmer, a salesman at heart. Where is Microsoft headed?

Remember how he won the browser war upstaging Netscape and the way he got Windows Media Player chew up Real Media and other competitors? Courts may have caught up with him eventually, but by then others were smashed to pulp. May be Microsoft is not yet fully out of the woods on those counts; but what is an occasional billion dollar fine when you're making multiple billions in profit every quarter? It’s just another cost of doing business.

Can Ballmer execute it with that clinical precision? We know what happened to Vista under Ballmer. Ballmer is fat and Microsoft is already gasping for breath under his dead weight. He’s now working hard and that is all the more reason why they should worry more as shareholders and we as its customers (if at all).

“Ballmer can't do the job. If I were in charge of Microsoft, I'd fire Ballmer” – says Steven J. Vaughan. I would second that for a different reason though – for even thinking of buying Yahoo for $47 billion. A company that will come a lot cheap a few years down the line with a clueless Jerry Yang and a hawkish Carl Icahn - who can't spell WEB even if you spot a W and an E for him - at the top.

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Microhoo deal is very much on

So, what’s happening to the Microsoft-Yahoo (Microhoo) deal? I don’t get to hear much on that. Meanwhile MSFT acquisition engine has not slackened its pace. Here it adds to its Bay area presence by acquiring Rapt, a software and consulting services provider that helps online publishers optimally price and package their display space.

Now I have no illusions of MSFT dropping off on Yahoo acquisition. If anything it means it is even more serious in taking on Google and become an online advertising heavyweight. With Yahoo gone, online application developers were a worried lot. They lost a major acquirer of their businesses. Now they should be breathing a lot easy with Microsoft picking up the slack.

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CA, Symonds - learn from Steve Ballmer, folks !

The Monkey word. It means different things to different people. Symonds and Cricket Australia (CA) took offense, but Steve Ballmer has no issues with Guy Kawasaki. Ha ! He even says the G-word again and again, again and again. But he's not so benign with Guy’s McBook Air. Here he tosses it down on the carpet and tries to break it. Says it doesn’t have a DVD drive :)

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I must say Guy kissed a lot of Ballmer ass in that chat. I got this vibe that MSFT seems to be dabbling in a new vertical now - image makeover. From what I’ve found in his blog, Guy normally has some deep drill question sets for most of his interviewees and here he hardly had any. May be he got scared of Ballmer's huge frame! The questions – Yahoo bid, Vista bugs and Google threat – have all been so frosty and predictable and he was unusually docile in letting Ballmer steal the show. So unlike Guy. Sounded all too stage managed by Microsoft PR team to project a cool image of the company and of Ballmer himself (aimed at rattled Yahoo employees?). Ballmer was in full glow throughout; he even leaked his email ID to the open audience.



Good friend Vinnie Mirchandani has his set of questions for Ballmer on MS enterprise initiatives that Guy didn’t cover. If Ballmer’s mood at that sitcom were for real, he may well be getting some honest answers too. Not the Ballmer we thought he is… Watch it, folks. Don’t miss out !

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No fun in monopolies

Microsoft is running into trouble with EU yet again.

"Talk," says the EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, "is cheap. Flouting the rules is expensive." How expensive? Well, several years of flouting and talking are going to cost Microsoft a record fine of 899 million euros, or about $1.35 billion if the dollar doesn't keep dropping.

On top of previous fines stemming from the same judgment, Microsoft's EU tab stands at about $2.6 billion. Tell me, is there any fun in running monopolies?

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Behind that mask, hides the monster?

I don’t believe this. Could this be Microsoft? The same Company that threatened lawsuits to deter customers from using Linux? But then As Marey Jo Foley says, Microsoft’s OSS strategy makes a lot of sense for Microsoft. It’s another way for Microsoft to try to make Linux obsolete, and not look as obviously ruthless doing so. And for OSS vendors who are selling a lot of their software on Windows.

Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and (4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

But then as Om Malik says, Ray Ozzie is talking about software partners, APIs, web services and the need for Microsoft to change [the way] it does business, and become open and interoperable. Between the lines you can read, Microsoft is worried, scratch that, very worried about developers leaving them in the cold. Om quotes analysts while suspecting MSFT is worried about the EU and the Justice Department creating problems when it comes to the pending Yahoo bid and the Danger deal.

At first blush looks like the leopard is changing its spots. Is it? Let you know soon.

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One Gates quote and a few great comments

"Google by a lot of criteria is probably at the top of the list. They're in this honeymoon phase of, Google can do anything at all times. If it was rumored they were doing pizza, you'd think it was going to be zero calories and free."

-- Bill Gates, in a wide-ranging interview with the Mercury News, says Microsoft's foremost competitor has a lot to learn about married life.

Posted by John Murrell on 06:38 AM in Quoted


Comments

Microsoft pizza, on the other hand, is only available with spoiled cheese, ketchup sauce and cardboard-flavored crust, and shows up at your door even though you didn't order it.
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Gates should stop giving interviews. I think the reasons why are obvious.
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Posted by: Badonkadonk Nov 20, 2006 1:02:53 PM
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Don't forget that MS pizza is full of bugs. Bill delivers the pizza, points a gun at your head and says "pay up". Soon after Bill leaves, a phisher comes and steals your wallet.
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Posted by: John Nov 20, 2006 1:27:39 PM
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the reason that google is so much better than microsoft is that google does not have a married life. google is like isaac newton : the eternal virgin whose ability to think and create and invent and discover has not been perverted subverted or otherwise contaminated by marriage.
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Posted by: linda marie hilton Nov 20, 2006 3:36:28 PM
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What? You don't like anchovies on your pizza? Something fishy here . . . That google has the true pulse of what the technology sector wants is in direct conflict what Gates delivers. (i.e., what he wants to give it . . ) Free, is of course the operative word here, and no, we don't honor coupons for that pizza . . . .
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Posted by: Raspy Nov 20, 2006 5:57:25 PM
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Don't forget, you don't actually OWN MS Pizza, you merely license it. Then again, that's ok. That's similar to what you do with beer.
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Posted by: bert Nov 21, 2006 11:10:05 AM
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The full text of Q & A session with Bill Gates on life, philanthropy and competition is here.

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