Steve Ballmer, chief executive for Microsoft, said today that MSN is in an advantageous position in search because they have the freedom to experiment while Google has to “play it safe” based on the size of their organization and the success of their business model.
Earth to Steve, your search engine is not competitive to Google’s because that’s all they do is experiment with new search technology. And they hire the smartest people to do it. It was Google that was the first to push Universal Search, which was a huge change to the way people searched for things. It was Google that came out with Webmaster Tools that enabled site owners to better understand how the search engine was indexing their site. It was Google that first used a quality score to influence PPC results. It was Google that came out with the Big Daddy update that solved a lot of canonicalization problems that MSNs engine still chokes on.
MSN/Live Search to my knowledge hasn’t done much to innovate search. Thier MSN live experiment was a huge failure. They had a directory and then closed it. They still can’t figure out redirects as well as Google or even Yahoo. The fact that their results are so influenced by on page factors makes them more susceptible to spam, scrappers and other black hat SEO techniques. They never have organic search engines at conferences to help Webmasters but they definately have advertising reps if you wanna spend money. The whole culture that MSN portrays is an organization that can’t move because its so big that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Google on the other hand projects a young, innovative culture that “gets it”.
If MSN is ever going to become competitive in this space, they need to get a grasp on how far behind they are and spend more time actually creating search technology innovations that resonate with users. Rather than having their chief executive officer say things like “Our search does not need to be all things to all people.” I mean what does that say? We only care about some people? It’s certainly not a winning philosophy when your trying to compete with Google and you have the resources that Microsoft does.
My other recommendation to Microsoft… buy Twitter. At least then you would own something that people actually cared about.
That’s my MSN rant for a Friday. Hope to see everyone at SES New York next week. I will be speaking in the first session after Guy’s opening keynote presentation. The session is entitled “Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers”. See ya in NYC!
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Why do you limit MSFT's failure to innovate to search?
My impression is that much of the technology that got them started was liberated from others. Their skill was packaging, marketing and monopolizing, not innovation.
If they want to innovate, they could start by offering an operating system that doesn't hog resources, that doesn't have a mind of its own, and that doesn't waste your morning starting up!