Need more examples? Here are commercials from MSN, Yahoo, and Ask.com. (I found them using Google and YouTube, a Google-owned video-hosting site.) Do any of them articulate a reason to switch search engines?
Redmond's biz-dev gorillas have strong-armed Sun Microsystems into bundling the MSN toolbar as an optional add-on to Sun's Java downloads in the US. What does the Silverlight-powered toolbar have to do with Java? Nothing! That's the genius of it.A dozen years ago, Microsoft broke Sun's run-anywhere Java technology, which was supposed to make operating systems irrelevant for most applications. The Windows version of Java changed one function call, in a way that seemed trivial. It made many apps written for Windows not work on other operating systems. Sun sued, cementing the company's has-been status. Microsoft eventually paid a token settlement for having cock-blocked Java in favor of its own buggy, security-violation-breeding ActiveX technology. I'm sure Bill Gates considers it the best $20 million he ever spent. Where was I? Oh yeah: Sun has been reduced to bundling a non-Java Microsoft toolbar with every Java download, to pick up a few extra bucks. I can only hope the Sun staffers involved are too new to be humiliated.
From online chatter, it was rumored that Microsoft was going to shutter its 13-year-old Web forum site, MSN Groups. It's now confirmed: Microsoft is ditching MSN Groups because it's launching a new product, Windows Live Groups. But you can't upgrade. Rather, Microsoft wants you to "migrate" to Multiply, yet another social network based out in Florida, and sign up for Windows Live Groups too. Maybe they should have just pointed you to a better competitor. That seems easier. [Microsoft]
Earlier, BoomTown reported that MSN exec Jeff Dossett would leave the company and possibly soon join Yahoo, where his longtime friend and fellow Microsoft alumna Joanne Bradford already works. Not true, says a Microsoft flack, who tells us: "Jeff Dossett is leaving his position as MSN’s US Executive Producer to seek other opportunities within Microsoft." So either Swisher got it wrong, or Yahoo got outbid for Dossett's services at the last minute. Given Swisher's red phone access to Yahoo's inner sanctum, we're guessing the latter is true. We haven't spoken to Dossett, who once climbed Mount Everest to raise awareness for AIDS and HIV in Africa, but we imagine if we did he'd say something like: "Join Yahoo, now? Too risky."
Earlier this year, MSN exec Jeff Dossett climbed to the summit of Mount Everest in order to bring attention to the problem of AIDS and HIV in Africa. But now he's doing something really crazy. Dossett quit Microsoft last week and likely plans to join Yahoo, BoomTown reports. BoomTown's Kara Swisher notes that Dossett might be going because he's an old friend of fellow ex-Microsoft exec and new Yahoo exec Joanne Bradford. It's unclear what Dossett will do at Yahoo. At MSN, Dossett's job description labeled him as "the lead for audience, content and programming strategy and execution in the U.S," but apparently that was just his latest gig in a long line of online sales and strategy positions.Update: Dossett is not actually leaving Microsoft at all, Valleywag has now learned. That'd be crazy.
Targeting Yahoo again, Microsoft may be abandoning its "Project Granola" plan to grow its online presence organically, but that doesn't mean ignoring food altogether. Microsoft's MSN and Hearst magazines will partner to create Delish.com, a food and recipe site to be released this fall. Just like Conde Nast's Epicurious, but 13 years later! [AdWeek]
If buying Facebook doesn't work out, Microsoft plans to compete on the Web by growing "organically." Bill Gates said that means search advancements, more marketing and lots of meetings. Lots of meetings. But here's what those meetings ought to be about: unifying Microsoft's online branding. Check out the screenshots of Microsoft's Web designs below. Nabbed by LiveSide, ReadWriteWeb's Josh Catone points out they contain "four different search boxes, two different Live.com "orb" logos (in four different sizes), and six different header backgrounds."
Steve Berkowitz is out as senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Services Group, BoomTown reports. In April 2006, Microsoft lured Berkowitz away from Ask.com, where he was CEO, and charged him with running MSN's ad sales, marketing, and business development. Yep, all the stuff that's failed bad enough that Microsoft now wants to pay $44.6 billion for Yahoo. BoomTown said sources couldn't confirm whether Berkowitz is out of the company or just out his job.
MSN and Microsoft's other Internet ventures are a sizeable business: $863 million in the most recent quarter. CBNC's Jim Goldman calls the quarter a "stunner." Perhaps, if he meant stunningly bad. Microsoft's growth rate is flat, Henry Blodget notes. Not counting Microsoft's aQuantive acquisition, it's been growing only 24 percent a year. And it's still losing money: about $200 million in the most recent quarter. No wonder Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo: For all of its woes, the Web giant still has its act more together than Microsoft.
Broadcast network NBC has inked promotional deals with almost every major Internet player to distribute the pilot episodes for its new fall lineup. Almost, that is, because it appears to be shunning Google's YouTube online-video site, as well as the News Corp.-owned MySpace. According to The Hollywood Reporter, episodes of new shows "Chuck," "Life," and "Journeyman" will be available for download on Amazon beginning September 10. If you'd prefer to download using Apple's iTunes software, sign up for the Apple Students group on social network Facebook. Members of that group get a one-week headstart on downloading the pilots. Prefer to stream your entertainment? Beginning in mid-September, you can catch "Life" on AOL, "Journeyman" on MSN, and "Chuck" on Yahoo. But it's the omissions that are really interesting.
Competitors' efforts have failed to dent Google's search market share. A survey of customer satisfaction paints a different picture — which just goes to show you that it's not, as Google likes to claim, all about the users. The newly released American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) from the University of Michigan has Yahoo regaining its lead over Google with an increase of 3.9 points, while Google fell 3.7 points. ACSI attributes the improvements to Yahoo's ratings to well-received design and feature enhancements. Ask.com experienced the biggest improvement, jumping 5.6 points, leaving it tied with Microsoft's MSN.
We hear there's a big showdown and resulting re-org in the works at MSN, Microsoft's online unit. The conflict has been framed in terms of relative newcomer Steve Berkowitz (of Ask Jeeves fame) versus the resisting remnants of the old online regime, i.e. online senior VP David Cole and his pal Yusuf Mehdi. True or false or somewhere in between. You tell us.
The morning news from our favorite Fortune 500 tech firms:
Microsoft's new ad program is broken right out of the box, according to one user:
