With all the search engine news of late, why shouldn’t Microsoft get in on the action. Sure, they’ve had epic fails on the last two – if not three – iterations of their search engine, but why should they stop now? Ignore that whole “insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting to get a different result” and just give them a chance.
The rumor is the OS overlords will try a different way of presenting the material – breaking down the results into categories. I, frankly, have no clue what that means exactly…and how is that different than how Google breaking down results into News, Shopping, Mapped Results and then search results?
What is MSFT really trying to do? The obvious answer is to go up against Google. Microsoft’s first attempt at a search engine was to simply have msn.com using aol search (I believe), then they went out and tried to create their own search (Live.com) and that idea deflated in failure. So, 0 for 2. I wonder why they really think this will be any different. If MSFT wants to go up against Google, they need market share. If they want market share the will NEED to buy market share, and that means purchasing someone along the lines of Yahoo! or Ask.com
Microsoft is at the point in their history where they now need to ask themselves what they want to be when they grow up. They cannot be everything to everyone. Do they want to be an OS company? To they want to be an App company? Do they want to be a hardware company? How about a search company? Now is the time for MSFT to pick one – maybe two things – and just do it well. Otherwise the company will end up doing a lot of stuff half-assed… much like they are now.
Update: The New Search engine will be going under the name “Bing”, also known as Kumo, but it sounds like many of the features they are pushing are already included in Google or Yahoo! I once again ask… what are you thinking, Microsoft?
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