Microsoft's top search executive leaving company from the Seattle PI covers Microsoft's Christopher Payne reportedly leaving the company. The AP also reports similar news from its sources. Payne took over search efforts at Microsoft back in 2003. He oversaw what I'd call Microsoft's "second era" of search, that of developing a crawler-based search engine to take on Google. Below, some history on the second era, plus the company's "first era" of human-powered search and how a reorganization under the direction of Steve Berkowitz marks a new "third era" of battlin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Employees | Microsoft: General | Stats: History

Last October, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer gave us a taste of how Microsoft was going to position Google as a copyright leech. Today, Microsoft launched a full-out assault on the company. Google deserves some of this, no doubt. But the idea as Microsoft as some altruistic copyright savior deserves some critical analysis, as well. Below, I'll dissect Microsoft's slams against Google, pointing out where they can be redirected back at Microsoft itself. But overall, I remain in agreement that Google should shift book search to an opt-in basis when dealing with copyrighted works. As noted, last Octobe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Book Search | Google: Critics | Google: General | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Crawling & Indexing | Microsoft: General | Microsoft: Live Search Academic | Microsoft: Live Search Books

Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft, spoke today about trying to beat Google during a Goldman Sachs investors conference. Various reports cover his comments relating to the Big G, Google, as well as search in general. Among them: Vertical search may be a place to pull ahead of Google selectively, pointing to yesterday's move in getting into health search [I agree] Google's success was a "wake-up call" for Microsoft Search as a "command line" for the internet [as John Battelle has been putting it] but not the only place where people search A reprise of the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: General

Hooked on Google from the San Jose Mercury News revisits a theme from Microsoft that I've reported to readers over the years. That's how Microsoft's failure to beat Google in search -- despite millions in spending -- gets the "it's early days, give us time" defense from Microsoft. The defense is partially true, but it gets weaker and weaker as the actual years of saying that mount. The Mercury News article comes off Microsoft chairman Bill Gates making his regular appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Last year, his comments at CES about Google being [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Microsoft: General | Microsoft: MSN Video | Stats: comScore | Stats: Popularity