Rumors of a new effort by Microsoft to tap Silicon Valley’s bright young techies and build a better search engine have been met with a collective arching of the shoulders.
Microsoft Building New Engine, World Shrugs
Microsoft makes a lot of money with the two core products found throughout the world: Windows and Office. The financials bear this out; Microsoft brings in more revenue in a quarter than Google does in a year.
But it’s Google that trades for $500 a share, while Microsoft has been pancake-flat in the $30s when it hasn’t been lower. Maybe that is what has driven the latest tale of Microsoft bringing a team of people to California to improve upon their search capabilities.
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington said Sanaz Ahari, who helped build Microsoft’s current next-gen search site Live.com, is leading the new team. She and her fellow Microsofties will work in Mountain View, best known for housing the Googleplex.
The ParisLemon blog offered the most apt observation on Microsoft’s stealthy search project, likening it to Germany fighting Russia in World War 2 and calling Google Search “the dead of Russian winter as far as this battle is concerned.”
Competition that spurs the dominant player to be even better benefits Internet users the most. Ahari and her fellow team members just need to understand why they are battling against Google. People use Google because it does very well at providing top-of-fold relevant results in response to queries.
It’s difficult to imagine people breaking the ingrained Google habit. Right now, Live Search does a good job at search, and it would be good enough if Google didn’t exist. That isn’t the reality of today, though.
