Valleywag
In the age of desktop software, Microsoft had the luxury of taking years to copy competitors. In the age of Web software, it's next to impossible to catch up. As customers use websites, they generate data which helps the site's creator improve it continuously. It's a topsy-turvy world reminiscent of David Brin's The Practice Effect, which Microsofties would do well to read. Spending nearly three years to implement even a bad idea like bribing users to use its search engine shows how badly ossified Redmond's software-development culture has become.
From Steve Ballmer on down, Microsoft executives have been hyping its cashback-search program as "disruptive," "innovative," "game-changing" — whatever the popular buzzword in Redmond is this week. It is none of these. Paying users for search is an old idea, one that Bill Gates broached in 2005 and one that even the likes of Jeff Bezos have tried without success. Never mind the history; search-engine expert Danny Sullivan finds the actual product frustrating. Even if it were well-executed, Microsoft's cashback program will not succeed at anything other than drawing highly motivated bargain hunters — exactly the kind of shoppers retailers are uninterested in reaching.
That Microsoft has staked so much on such a bad idea is a sign of its desperation, one in line with its botched bid for Yahoo. In its renewed talks with that company, Microsoft has pinned its hopes on somehow getting ahold of Yahoo's search business, thinking that this is somehow the key to success.
Microsoft and Yahoo both need to try something else besides beating Google at search. What they need to do isn't to make a search engine better than Google's; they need to make search irrelevant, as tiresome a metaphor for computing as Microsoft's desktop interface seems now.
In the world of The Practice Effect, new goods are nearly useless, while old goods are valuable, improving rather than wearing down with every use. That is a neat way of thinking of the world of the Web, where algorithms get better, not worse, over time.
Udi Manber, who headed Amazon.com's doomed effort to compete in the search-engine world before jumping to Google, recently wrote about Google's efforts to improve the quality of search. Manber attempts to be modest in the post, but he manages to make the job of keeping up with the complexity of Google's search queries sound almost, but not quite, impossible.
That's actually good for Microsoft, if only its executives were bright enough to realize it. With Google obsessed by this challenge, it could move on to other fields of endeavor. Search is not the be-all and end-all of the Web; finding is the beginning of a task, not the end of it. For Microsoft, search is over. It's time to go practice something else.
Comments
Still, this can really undercut GOOG margins and cash cow.
nice post owen
Well said. What I really don't understand about Microsoft -- and many tech companies really -- is why they always try to launch new services/products under the same corporate umbrella. If MS wants to be a bigger part of the internet, it seems like they should create individually branded spin-off companies that are wholly owned instead of trying to make them subsist within the existing corporate bureaucracy. In particular because of branding -- I just don't understand the whole "Windows Live" thing. It's like ... Miller Lite Peanut Butter, or Kleenex Beer. Surely the whole Toyota v. Lexus idea hasn't totally passed the tech industry over.
Buying Yahoo is at least smart from that perspective ... although I am dubious that it will not lead to the peanut butter being spread over an even larger surface area.
Wow! This dude can write!
Agree with your premise that search as currently cast is not the ultimate conclusion of human-computer interaction; fashioning a proper search query is *work,* and evaluating the presented results is yet more work. The company/organization/individual that succeeds in making these tasks seem effortless will be the next disruptor.
yo son I gotta join in givin you the props on this post.
microsoft can't be like the COBOL dude thinkin he gonna learn flex - he never gonna compete with the kids and their meth and stuff. Gotta do something else or you'll die, or go work at Wal-Mart, one of those.
Slow and glitchy wins the race. I mean steady. Steady!
Ah, yes Owen. Google rules all, will rule all, and will never ever ever ever ever be challenged. Like IBM. Ma Bell. And the Corleone family.
Invincible all. Always has been. Always will be. Just like Microsoft.
Might as well give up now. No hope. Never was. Never will be.
Somebody from Google being modest? Pfffwwww....Riiiigghhtt .... And Schmidty's a happily married and always faithful.
What do you think Google does? Google also pays FireFox, Adobe, Realnetwork, Dell etc money for installing Google Toolbar with download of their products and Dell computers. They are also buys customers. Their service is good but yahoo and live search are no less. Google has mind share and market share but they pay to maintain as well. Its all business, google is no charity.
@bloggerman: It isn't that Google is invincible, it's just that when you are going against a monopoly you have to bring about a game-changer/paradigm shifter. Microsoft and Yahoo bring none of these to the table when it comes to search and Microsoft's latest offering is merely a gimmick. It doesn't improve upon search or make people use search in a different way.
It's nothing more than a carrot on a stick.
Practice Effect is not my favorite Brin (*cough* Startide Rising *cough*), but it was a cool analogy.
You know you always had a sense that Microsoft's products were at least semi-sucky and buggy and just a bit off. But there wasn't a lot of choice and it at least worked and was fairly complete and affordable... and then you were locked in.
On the web you're not very locked in, and you pay basically nothing to use it, so users will abandon sites that are semi-sucky and buggy and just a bit off for ones that aren't, and Microsoft can't compete on price, unless they go to negative pricing, which they say they're doing.
So Microsoft hires an ad agency to get more hip but doesn't fix their broken search. That is fiddling while Rome burns. Makes me suspect they're forgotten how to write software. People will look back to this area and compare what's happening with Apple and Microsoft to GM eating Ford's lunch when they started offering nicer, more expensive cars. People are more prosperous today and computers are cheaper and for more and more people it's worth it to spend a few hundred extra dollars to get something that's better.
how come Udi Manber says they made a search in a language called "Filipino" ? The language is called Tagalog. We'd never accuse you of speaking in Jewish, Udi... that would be Naz"i of us.
@Bdobbs: No one will be offended if you "accuse" them of speaking in Jewish. He's just ignorant, don't make this more than it is.
@smkr4: I gotta eg me some of the Kleenex beer. Hops make my nose run.
@smkr4: If MS wants to be a bigger part of the internet, it seems like they should create individually branded spin-off companies that are wholly owned instead of trying to make them subsist within the existing corporate bureaucracy.
Like FileMaker?
Ah yes, the old game changer/paradigm shifter...paradigm. Easy to write, not so easy to define. And even harder to implement.
Oh, I know I'm in the Valley now when I've gotten to debating paradigm game changer theory.
Funny thing about these....things....you never know exactly what they are or precisely where and when they'll show up. If you did, everybody would be able to achieve them and there wouldn't be this massive disparity of incomes here.
The one thing I do know is that few people are paying much attention to what Yahoo is actually doing. There's little serious reporting on it (yes, I'm looking at you, Valleyragarinos) and analysis tends to boil down to a perfunctory and sarcastic dismissal (ditto) that closely follows The Street. Sloppy journalism. Slopping thinking.
The customers that Microsoft will attract will be exactly the ones that retailers don't want, the cheapskates, the ones who will do anything to save a few cents, in fact the very same customers who are causing eBay so many headaches.
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