How Can Microsoft Beat Google?

Microsoft versus Google with the European Union as adjudicator perhaps. Not sure which one is google and which one is microsoft. Such attributions are perhaps the heart of the problem.

This is an interesting question that almost everyone misinterprets.

People assume the question is:

(wrong question) "How can Microsoft beat Google at Search?"

But Search doesn't make money. Forget search. (Search just brings traffic).

Advertising makes money.

While Google are almost invincible at search, they're quite flimsy at advertising. Lucky for them, most other people suck even more at advertising.

If Microsoft offered a significantly improved advertising service, then Google would be forced to buy advertising services off Microsoft. And then, the more Google excelled at search, the more money Microsoft would make.

Think about that for a moment. It sounds insane, like some whacked out piece of futurama satire, but i'm deadly serious. Okay, not deadly lethal serious, but serious enough to repeat it in a <blockquote>, for those who scan without reading:

"If Microsoft offered a significantly improved advertising service, then Google would be forced (by shareholders) to buy advertising services off Microsoft!"

Five years ago, Google's advertising offerings were revolutionary. Their minimalist text-only ads took the world by storm. The jaded internet user actually clicked on a few ads. An incredible time was had by all.

In the five years since, Google have offered only marginal innovation.

The funny thing is that in those five years, Microsoft seem to have gone almost backwards!

Far from jumping on the 'minimalist' bandwagon, they persist with the blinky-banner ad school of thinking, and even dropped SIX billion dollars on buying aQuantive, early last year in a move that... well, i'd be scratching my head if i were Steve Balmer.

Microsoft could simply fire everyone in advertising, and get a bunch of lunatic perverts from a local insane venereal-monkey asylum, and probably come up with a better advertising program. (There are rumours that they've done exactly that several times already)

Now, in the interests of being more constructive with my feedback, here's my two step plan for winning at advertising.

Clone what google currently do (i.e. same thing they did five years ago)
Improve upon it.

The real constructive criticism would be around how to improve upon what Google currently do with advertising.

I'm out of time. So what are your thoughts, how can advertising be better than we get from Google today?

Microsoft is the russian dude right.

There is no way they are rocky - he is the underdog.

You've gotta wonder how far behind and being beaten Microsoft have to be before people stop considering the people beating their arses the "underdog".

I think in this, Microsoft are the underdog, Shazza.

Google isn't a small startup anymore.

@Andrew -- woah, put your six shooter back in the holster there Tobin, that's my wife you're talkin too -- and this is Rocky we're discussin' ;-)

It's hard to see either Ivan Drago, with his excellent reach, or Rocky Balboa -- with his incredible stamina and ability to switch to southpaw -- as the underdog.

Neither GOOG nor MSFT are underdog, but both are dogs when it comes to online advertising.

This is a very immature field with amateur offerings from all the pros.

Sorry to get the conversation back on track re improving google's advertising...

I agree that their search is very good, and has an uncanny ability to find what you're really looking for, even when your search terms are not perfect.

The ads are quite the opposite -- they seem to be completely out of place a lot of the time.

I think they could hire a few PhD boffins to help get this right, rather than pouring billions into buying existing companies that get it all wrong anyway.

Nice topic!

In this case "Incredible stamina" is a euphamism for "being able to have the crap pummeled out of you for 11 rounds and still keep walking", making MSFT == Balboa, right?

This is a good point, but it's totally counter to what seems to be Microsoft's culture. It's the same reason they often rewrite the same functionality found in open source projects (MSTest rather than NUnit, Team Explorer rather than Subversion... I saw a blog post on this recently).

I think they want their own brand of search just for marketing purposes, without having to say "powered by Google" or something like that.

@Coonstar you're just wrong as always ;-)

@Dylan -- yes but also no. in this case they take it a lot more personally.

in this case MSFT don't just want to have a search offering, where any search offering will do. They want to be the ultimate search offering -- and i think it's a foolish goal at the moment.

trying to be the ultimate advertising provider is a better goal because the race is still wide open, and they're in with a shot.

MSTest v Nunit is a fair fight -- where both lose, to xUnit, MbUnit and others.

Subversion v Team Explorer is an apples versus oranges comparison. Both deserve intense scorn and derision for separate reasons. This is just opinion, not fact based, btw. ;-)

I wasn't actually making the comparisons--I've only used NUnit out of all of those, and I haven't used TFS anywhere near as much as I've used SVN. The point was that MS won't even build hooks for open source projects; they have to build their own (though I agree, their products often end up being very different).

The blog post I was talking about was http://ryepup.unwashedmeme.com/blog/2007/03/27/codeplex-wastes-six-months-reinventing-wheels/ (which I saw because it was referenced by http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001144.html)

@Dylan:

I find that whole debate pretty interesting.

I agree that MSFT are doing stuff wrong, but i don't agree with the specifics of what they're doing wrong. I'm probably more in agreement with Jeff Atwood -- though he's a bit too much of a TFS fan for my tastes.

re: "MS won't even build hooks for open source projects"

this is completely untrue in a lot of cases, but certainly they don't build hooks for every single open source project. (how could they?)

currently, the MVC project is a shining example for what every internal MSFT project should try to emulate -- but that ain't gonna happen of course.

i think the misguided thought behind this kind of claim, though, is the idea that subversion integration with Visual Studio (for example) is made diffcult by some kind of malicious intervention on microsoft's part. i don't think that's true. i love to think ill of them, but i can't imagine that they waste much time removing features in order to cripple the OS community. i think it's only by oversight or by lack of budget for such edge-case concerns. (and as much as we want to think overwise, integration with subversion is an edge-case)

but i can be completely wrong on this too, i do realise that.

hey nice blog by the way Dylan!
lb

What do you mean by "Coonstar you're just wrong as always"

Why be so dismissive of someone? Clearly they have thought about what they wrote or they wouldn't have written it in the first place.

And as regards Microsoft overtaking open source offerings how about the way that NDoc was crushed by sandcastle? More telling still is the way they removed support for multiple providers from Linq To Sql so that people are forced into using Microsoft Sql Server.

@JCooney and mostly
@K8: Sorry if i sounded too negative in that response to Mr Cooney. I am a big fan of JCooney and meant my criticism in a positive and friendly way. Again: big fan.

NDoc crushed by sandcastle... I don't know so much. Again, I criticise both.

The "thought" of sandcastle seemed to be enough to crush NDoc -- so i think NDoc essentially collapsed under its own weight.

The Linq To Sql discussion is an interesting one -- I'd love to know more about what really happened there. I think that a big strategy tax came into play.

Anyone who hasn't read up on the history and origins of Linq 2 Sql is invited to do and then to speculate wildly. It's crazy stuff.

Just wish we knew more!

lb

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Underdog, The Movie
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Balboa Island, Your Perfect Vacation Getaway
The Nevada Department of Corrections
DLinq Networking Products

Hey Leon,

Oops and apologies, although not _because_ she's your wife, but general netiqette :\

I'm not fond of the whole "Google is such an underdog" perception anymore. It's a proper company with the same issue as any other multi-billion dollar company - they just seem to get a free pass more often.

The more I think about it, the more the Balboa analogy fits...DOJ was Appolo Creed (which they fought a few times), the EU is like Mr. T.....and Google == Ivan Drago....Sergy Brinn sounds like a pretty eastern-european name.

Re: Dylan's comments that this is suggestion (copy and improve upon) is counter to MS culture...isn't that their standard MO?

@mike -- ah! i finally see what you're doing there. Those are examples of contextual advertisements that could be expected, given the thread thus far. Yes, tricky thing this AI stuff.

@lb - Thanks on the blog comment. Yeah, MVC definitely represents MS going after multiple styles of developers (being very different in concept and purpose from normal ASP.Net), which is good.

Not that they're avoiding FOSS/other companies' products maliciously. I imagine it's one part marketing/culture, but there are other reasons. Incidentally, someone sent me this blog post yesterday: http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jprosise/archive/2008/07/11/microsoft-open-source-and-the-meaning-of-life.aspx

@JCooney - If they tried to outdo Google in advertising rather than search, yes, that would be their standard MO, and it would be a good business move. If they completely abandoned search and picked up another provider, that would be counter to MS culture.

Google's AdWords program is only part of their advertising program, Google now owns DoubleClick and I guess you could now say that Google is dominating the Internet Marketing market.

At least we can feel safe knowing that DoubleClick won't be doing anything flimsy with our private data ( http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx ), and they have been using this exact information-gathering demographic marketing technique since 2003 (or before that even).

Google won't be forced to ever buy anything from Microsoft, whatever Microsoft can do, from what I've seen Google can match it if they have to anyway.

If anything I'd say that Google are invincible at advertising and search. Google would not want to buy advertising from a rival company so I cannot see that ever happening. If Microsoft want to gain ground with search they'll need to jump on the semantic web bandwagon and pour money into researching the best methods to combat this.

That being said, Microsoft shouldn't even really be online. They're like a bully from school wanting to throw down with the wrestling team from their nearby university. If Microsoft want to excel at something online then perhaps an acquisition of Adobe would be better (and around the same price). At least that way you own top-quality graphics and web tools, flash and the ability to make Apple (Photoshop's foster family) its bitch.

@lb I usually don't but this time I have to disagree with you. I think the key is search not advertizing. the reason people go to goole is search. the reason google ads are good is because they use "use search" to deliver relative/context ads where people are more willing to click.

facebook is a great site and has an awesome demographic but their ad engine is a failure (in my opinion) because it lacks CONTEXT. When i send an email to a friend asking where he gets his business cards and the ads in gmail are displaying online business card design and print sites - now that's good and relative ad serving. Only possible if your context search is good.

so how should ms beat google? BETTER SEARCH.

PS: I just installed 2 new machines, the first thing I do is switch my homepage to Google and default browser to Firefox (btw, I am a big MS fan).. sad huh?

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