Posts tagged Microsoft
Google 99.9% sure it will shut China site: good news for Yahoo and Bing?
Mar 15th
Talks with China over censorship have got Google nowhere fast and the search engine giant is now “99.9%” certain to shut its Chinese search engine, according to weekend reports. But what will its China exit mean for other search brands and furthermore, search advertising?
If there were a set of traffic lights blocking Google competitors wishing to expand in China with a red light, it’d now turn green – or at least yellow.
There are more than 380 million internet users in China and the search engine market is now estimated to be worth over $1.5 billion. And it’s still growing! At a phenomenal rate, actually. From 2006 to 2010, it is expected to see a compound annual growth in excess of 30%.
But the Chinese internet market is still relatively young, and as the rest of the nation starts to get online, the size of its search market is set to rocket. Is it really a good idea for Google to get out?
Google seems to be holding its search engine to ransom. It’s annoyed it can’t get what it wants, but what Google is perhaps failing to realise is, if it exits China, it will lose a massive slice of the potential search marketing pie and could open the road for Yahoo to overtake it in the usage stakes.
Yahoo and Microsoft are on the path of assault and Bing is already doing incredibly well. Imagine if it goes into China and cleans up, picking up where Google left off. There’s a whole search worked out there, censorship or not, there’ll now be a huge gap in the search market in China.
Even though Yahoo has been present in China for some time, it has never enjoyed the popularity it would like – but China remains somewhat of an untapped market in an economy that is crying out for reform and change.
American brands have always performed well in China, with the Generation Y Chinese looking to align themselves with western values and ideals (it’s the stuff they see on TV after all).
Furthermore, Chinese internet users aren’t just searching for MP3s and playing online games. Over the next five years, the number of businesses launching their ads through Chinese search engines is predicted to increase at a rate of 17% annually, according to Backbone IT Group.
It says that online spending in China is finally starting to take hold: “Chinese internet users spent over $35 million online in 2006; an increase of almost 50% from 2005. Recent events in China, such as the Beijing 2008 Olympics further increased levels of online promotion and attracting even more advertisement opportunities.”
Google, if it does decide to leave China, will leave a 20% market share up for grabs – Baidu currently has a 65% share while Yahoo shares 15% with Sohu and Sogou.
Although holding great promise, the Chinese online market has proved difficult ground for many Western companies. The barriers to entry to the Chinese market are many – complex language, unique culture and a different legal system. But it’s not impossible to break into. Yahoo and Bing could certainly use the extra 20% share and advertisers would probably find it cheaper…Google could miss out on millions.
As China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Li Yizhong said: “If you don’t respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you.”
Will this ad make you switch to Bing?
Mar 11th
This new ad for Microsoft’s Bing search engine is excellent. It goes right to the heart of the problem that many internet searches often have – finding what they really want, the first time.
As I’ve said before, Microsoft underwent extensive studies into how people used search engines, and what would make them switch before it even started to design Bing. It’s answer: the decision engine.
This ad, which is brilliant, funny and really speaks to consumers about what the offering is as well as its unique sell, will get me to try out Bing for sure.
I’ve loved Google, and I loved its Parisian Love ad, but I too, am sick of the information overload.
Bing is rising in the ranks but will it convince marketers?
Mar 8th
Earlier this month, Microsoft was launching an attack on Google saying its rival is anti-competitive. Today, Bing is launching an advertising assault on Google, but will all this child’s play convince marketers to come on board to this new, super-dooper decision engine?
Microsoft’s search engine may trail Google in searches, but when it comes to Fans on Facebook, the tech giant ranks number one!
To cement its position, Microsoft is set to launch a major advertising campaign that will encourage UK users to start using its Bing search engine.
The campaign will run across major TV stations – something Google only started doing last year after 10 years in the game – and will urge internet users to ‘Bing and decide’.
Microsoft wants to help searchers make more informed decisions. Of course, actually persuading people to move away from a search engine that, for many, has become synonymous with the internet is going to be a tough ask.
Bing is new, fresh and not another ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ project, according to Microsoft. Its attack on Google has been described as “trench warfare” and it won’t be over in days and months but years, warns the giant.
However, a study by Catalyst Group shows that although users like the new search engine, they are unlikely to switch.
A usability focus group, after using both engines, said they preferred Google, with only one third saying they liked Bing. That being despite the fact that 82% preferred Bing’s design, 64% preferred Bing’s organisation of features and another 64% preferred Bing’s refinement and filtering options.
With regards to relevance of results, the majority of users thought both engines preformed equally well. This goes to show how entrenched Google has become in our thinking when it comes to search.
When it came to paid ads it seems that again Bing came out top with users spending 150% more time looking at the ad space at the top of the page, possibly due to the refinement options available at the top of the page.
What makes Bing unique is its organization of results. Microsoft conducted extensive studies into how people used search engines, and what would make them switch before it even started to design Bing.
The challenge now for Microsoft is – as its own research revealed – that when choosing which search engine to use, the decision is subconscious. So even though studies show people might prefer Bing, most would stay with what they’re used to – Google.
Is that going to be the same chain of thought for advertisers and marketers?
The good news for Bing is its growing faster than Google did.
The bad news? It puts ads at bottom of the search page. Users of Bing don’t scroll through the search results as much as they would on Google because they don’t have to – by the very nature of Bing, the most relevant results are at the top. That’s the decision part…
This has consequences for ad placement. As users are less likely to scroll down, ads that are in the bottom half of the page will be seen less often hence placing a higher premium on getting a top PPC listing. This will encourage bidding wars, so it is likely that PPC rates in Bing will be higher than in Google.
But Bing is pushing hard to extend its advertising affiliate network. If advertisers are bidding more for Bing ads than Google ads, it will make Bing a more attractive proposition for affiliates than Google because an affiliate will earn more from Bing’s higher-priced ads.
In the long term, this could lead to Bing having a more extensive affiliate network than Google.
As anyone who is familiar with Microsoft knows, the company doesn’t release mature products. It instead launches to the marketplace as soon as possible and then relies on user feedback to fine-tune performance. So expect Bing to evolve, and quickly. Before you know it, we’ll be saying: “I Binged it”.
Forget the iPhone and Google phone, Skinput is coming. And you already own the handset.
Mar 5th
It is widely accepted that mobile phone users have graduated from simple voice and text handsets and hence we have smartphones almost taking over the world. But as you may well know, everything is just a trend until something better comes along. Enter the Skinput.
Chris Harrison an American university student, with help from Microsoft’s research lab, has created a system that allows people to use their own hands and arms as touchscreens by detecting the various ultralow-frequency sounds produced when tapping different parts of the skin.
Skinput uses microchip-sized “pico” projectors to allow for interactive elements rendered on the user’s forearm and hand.
An armband houses the projector along with an array of sensors which collect the signals generated by the skin taps and then calculates which part of the display you want to activate.
The result is an always available, naturally portable body interface. The acoustic detector can detect five skin locations below the elbow with an accuracy of 95.5%, which corresponds to a sufficient versatility for many mobile applications, according to the researchers. Does this mean that users will have the potential to become walking billboards?
It good news for those who always want to stay connected. According to a Tellabs survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, two-thirds of mobile users around the globe are interested in “smart” services that would feed them information based on personal preferences, location, time of day and social setting.
Did Yahoo shape the internet?
Mar 3rd
Yahoo! is celebrating its 15th birthday this week and it seems to be prompting a lot of talk about the internet, how it all got started and where it’s going. Did Yahoo start the internet?
Technology has fundamentally changed the way that marketers approach advertising. With the internet creating a new medium – digital – the marketing industry has changed forever, to which Yahoo was at the forefront.
Fifteen years ago, when Jerry Yang and David Filo had a lot of spare time on their hands, they decided that this internet thing was going to be a big deal and wanted to make it easier for people to navigate around.
When I think back to 15 years ago, I remember wondering what I’d ever need to know about the internet for. It was complicated and all scientific back then. Plus, the ‘www’ in my eyes stood for the ‘world wide wait’, I was impatient and would rather look up an encyclopedia than sit in front of an old IBM monitor listening to that terrible dial-up sound. My how things have changed.
Now there are 234 million websites, 200 billion spam emails per day, 126 million blogs and 27.3 million tweets per day. Yahoo alone has 600 million users, so I think a Happy Birthday is in order as just 15 years ago, there were only 18,000 web sites and fewer than 10 million people globally on the internet.
There are estimated to be 1.6 billion people on the internet today—about 25% of the world’s population.
In a blog posting, Yang and Filo wrote: “We’ve had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world…always trying to invent the future. Of course, we didn’t set out to start one of the world’s largest internet companies or be leading a movement that has changed the world.”
It is worth remembering that Yahoo was the first major search engine to enjoy success in the early days of the internet – it was around before Google, yet we never said ‘I Yahooed it’. It was also one of the only internet companies to survive the dot.com bust, which consequently sent its shares soaring.
But by the very nature of the internet, the online world evolved which meant competition and when you come in at the top, there is only one place to go.
The huge lesson Yahoo has learnt in 15 years? Yang and Filo say: “Change and growth on the internet happen at warp speed—especially if you’re filling a need. With the proliferation of websites and with hundreds of thousands of people accessing our guide, it was simply impossible for us to continue doing this on our own.”
Yes, the lesson was to accept competition, and a few years later, defeat. But never fear, Yahoo will be around for a while yet. It has teamed up with Microsoft to make sure of that and had made headlines this week after signing a deal with Twitter.
Yang and Filo conclude: “The internet still has enormous and untapped potential. There are billions of more people we need to drive online, and then provide them with relevant content and opportunities that they’ve never dreamed about before.”
Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms agrees and has set the government a target of getting 7.5 million more people online by 2014 with up to £12m allocated to spend on digital social inclusion.
More info on how the internet has changed our lives from an interview with Yahoo.
Microsoft vs Google in a case of the pot calling the kettle black
Mar 1st
Microsoft would obviously be among the first to say that leading firms should not be punished for their success, according to vice president and deputy general counsel of Microsoft Dave Heiner. So why is Microsoft verbally bashing Google out there in the media over antitrust and competition concerns?
It is a case of the pot calling the kettle black – and I will now share a Simpson episode to tell you why.
In season nine of the Simpsons (screened in 1998), an episode called ‘Das Bas’ saw Homer attracts the attention of Bill Gates when he starts his own internet company – Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net.
Here is some of the script that should illustrate Microsoft’s blatantly childish jealousy issues and the way the company is currently doing business:
GATES: Your internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can’t figure out what, if anything, CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet does, so rather than risk competing with you, I’ve decided simply to buy you out.
HOMER: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
GATES: Well everyone always does. Buy ‘em out, boys!
(Bill Gates companions begin to trash the “office”.)
HOMER: Hey, what the hell’s going on!
GATES: Oh, I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of checks!
Gates isn’t buying Homer’s company, he’s ‘trashing’ it – much the way, one could argue, that he is verbally trashing Google currently in the press.
Government competition agencies are increasingly focused on Google’s growing power in search and online advertising, according to Microsoft.
But don’t forget, government competition agencies have spent the past seven months investigating a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft that is thought to be ‘antitrust’ and ‘anticompetitive’ too.
Google is dominant in certain markets, including search advertising. Last year the DOJ told a federal court that Google’s book search plan is anticompetitive in several respects. (One big problem is that Google would help itself to essentially exclusive rights to tens of millions of books—effectively locking out everyone else.)
Last week, the European Commission said it was investigating various aspects of Google’s conduct, including claims of retaliation, exclusivity and manipulation of search results to disadvantage rivals. Google was reported by Ciao, a subsidiary of Microsoft.
On Microsoft’s blog today, it said, “Google’s public response to this growing regulatory concern has been to point elsewhere—at Microsoft.”
It says that Google is telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.
It’s worth asking whether Google’s response really addresses the concerns that have been raised. I’ve asked Google and I waiting to hear back…but will the search giant even dignify such allegations and join this childish fight?
When the Yahoo and Microsoft partnership was approved last month, many were singing the praises of the pair. Others, myself included, said that while it is good for competition, the pair have quite the task ahead of them if they are going to get consumers and advertisers to migrate away from Google (a brand they have stuck by for over ten years). How will they do it? I pondered.
Bashing, it seems. But Microsoft maintains that it is not alone in trying this business tactic:
Heiner says: “Complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors. (I’ve seen plenty of competitor complaints. Novell, when current Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the helm, was never hesitant about complaining to regulators about Microsoft. Google hasn’t been shy about raising antitrust concerns about Microsoft in the last few years, either.)
“This is the way that competition law agencies function: They look to competitors in the first instance to understand how particular markets operate, the practices of dominant firms and the competitive significance of those practices.
“Of course, as we have always said, it is vitally important that competition law authorities also listen to and assess the views of customers, business partners and everyone else affected by a dominant player’s business practices. Ultimately what’s important is not who is complaining, but whether or not the challenged practices are anticompetitive.”
Is Google anticompetitive? Or just too big to touch?
Publishers, advertisers, advertising agencies and others want to see real competition in search and online advertising, says Microsoft.
But if that is provided, what guarantees that people will switch?
Google in trouble again. Microsoft dobbed.
Feb 24th
Google yesterday took the wraps off its new publisher-side ad platform, combining its ad and search technologies with DoubleClick’s. Today, it has been met with a frosty reception from the European Commission over several competition complaints from rivals.
Google’s combined DoubleClick and Google Ad Manager product is designed to ease the complexity publishers face in serving ads, managing ad network relationships and maximizing revenue from inventory sold directly and through ad nets or exchanges, says Google’s blog.
New features include an open API that lets publishers tie in third-party applications like forecasting and workflow tools, integration with the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and new yield-optimization features.
But the European Commission is now considering complaints from three online companies regarding Google practices including its search rankings, which could stop the search giant dead in its tracks.
The complaints from UK price comparison site Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr allege that Google’s search algorithm demotes their sites in web search results because they compete with Google.
Microsoft-owned Ciao has also complained to European authorities about Google’s standard terms and conditions, which has led Google to tell some reporters that it believes Microsoft has fuelled the complaint fire.
Google has been plagued by regulatory scrutiny in recent years. Most recently, the US Department of Justice has challenged Google’s settlement with book publishers and authors groups to create an online digital archive. The US Federal Trade Commission is also seeking more information on the competitive impact of its proposed $750 million purchase of mobile advertising company AdMob.
Now, the European Commission has written to Google to find out how its search functions work.
But Google is betting publishers will want the simplicity of a single provider to manage their inventory and provide monetization options through either its AdSense ad network or the DoubleClick exchange.
Google said on its blog, “We see an opportunity to improve ad serving even further by combining Google’s technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick’s display advertising and ad serving experience. Since we acquired DoubleClick in March 2008, our engineering and product teams have been working with online publishers to tackle the obstacles that prevent them from maximizing revenues from their websites.”
Either way you look at it, this is a sign of many more battles to come when it comes to the search giants. But is Google really doing anything wrong? Perhaps its competitors are just jealous…
Can Microsoft and Yahoo knock Google off its throne?
Feb 19th
Steve Ballmer has described the approved partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo as a “milestone”, while Carol Bartz claims it to be a “breakthrough”. But why is this ‘alliance’ so significant?
The decision has been resting on the shoulders of the US Department of Justice and the European Commission for the past seven months. Japan, Korea and Taiwan are still yet to approve what will surely be a threat to Google’s ten year reign over the search market.
Google, which has a 85.78% share of the global search market, has sat on its throne quite comfortably this past decade as every competitor that has entered the market has still failed to even make a dent in Google’s audience. However, with a combined market share of almost 10%, Yahoo and Bing are proving serious in their bid for leadership of the search world.
Both CEO’s Bartz and Ballmer suggest the ‘alliance’ is a bid to boost innovation. More simply, it’s about creating more competition and boosting revenues.
The global search market is estimated to be worth around $33 billion. In the US alone it is said to be $4 billion and in the UK, marketers spent £1.75 billion in 2009 alone.
Yahoo is hoping to see some of that spend on its bottom line next year – it will be taking 88% of all search revenue generated from its partnership with Microsoft.
The question on everyone lips now is just how long will it take the pair to increase their share.
The deal will not be implemented straight away. In fact, it will take almost until the end of this year to know whether or not the alliance has been a success.
One thing we can be sure of though, is that it will certainly force Google to rethink its strategy (namely its Adwords platform which has in the past gathered criticism) and also keep it on its toes to innovate and offer bespoke offerings (not like Buzz!).
Poor Google. If you come in at the top there is only one place to go.
But Warren Cowan, CEO of Greenlight, writing for UTalkMarketing.com, is not convinced that Google’s grip on the search market will be strained.
He says that the idea that a Yahoo/Bing merger will create a search player with close to 30% market share (as quoted in AdAge) might be accurate for the US, but not in the UK – or western Europe for that matter.
Google is simply too big. But then again, isn’t what they said about all those banks that went bust (too big to fail)?
The big challenge now, however, is tempting away loyal Google users who have, for the past ten years, used little else when it comes to search.
Windows Phone 7 – in detail
Feb 15th
Following reports yesterday that Microsoft was to launch a challenger to the smartphone market currently dominated by Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Andriod and RIM’s Blackberry, the tech giant has unveiled the details of its closely kept mobile secret.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft showed off Windows Phone 7 for the first time. The handset will pull together content from social networking sites and other web services on a scale unseen on competing platforms and will most likely pose a serious threat to its competitors RIM, Apple and Google.
Why?
It’s flashy and new and has been designed with the user in mind, making all those things we use our mobile for more accessible, easier to use and to navigate.
Previous Windows Mobile versions were scrapped to make way for a completely new design that integrates Microsoft’s Zune music player and the Xbox Live gaming service.
The tech giant is ready to hit the smartphone market big time and has already secured partners including Samsung, HTC, HP, Sony Ericsson, Dell, LG and Toshiba.
At the Windows Phone 7 unveiling, Joe Belfiore, VP for Microsoft’s Windows Phone division, said the explosion of applications and web services available on mobile phones meant devices had become far too complex claiming that that phones had started to resemble PCs but “a phone’s just not a PC – it’s a smaller, more intimate device”.
Microsoft wanted a smart design that would separate applications and bring together some of the key things that are most important to people.
It’s five key hubs, that feature on a completely new interface with a ‘start’ page based around live ‘tiles’ representing the most common tasks include people, pictures, office, music + video and games.
The ‘people’ tile is all of a users contacts from Outlook, social networking sites and web mail services – pulled together with thumbnail images into one interface. People the user has recently communicated with rise to the top and for each contact the phone can display their recent activity on various social networking sites.
Under the ‘pictures’ tile is all of the users photos taken with the phone, synced from a PC or uploaded to social networking sites. Photos uploaded by friends to their social media profiles can also be accessed.
The Office’ tile is pretty self-explanatory, it allows users to view and edit documents or make voice, text and picture notes.
Every Windows Phone 7 will essentially be a Zune music player, with users able to sync music and videos using PC software similar to iTunes under the ‘music + video’ tile. Third-party music and video applications such as Pandora are also integrated.
Lastly, finally finding a way to take Xbox to the next level, under the ‘games’ tile users will be able to play games against other Xbox Live users.
Microsoft has said a key priority with the new operating system was maintaining consistency in design. Each Windows Phone 7 device will have three buttons on the front - Start, Search and Back. The tile menu interface will also be virtually the same on all handsets.
The built-in calendar pulls together appointments from both web-based personal calendars and from Microsoft Exchange, while addresses and phone numbers are automatically hyperlinked. Clicking on an address brings it up on Bing Maps.
The maps feature is interesting, and will be a major competitor to Google Maps. By simply typing “sushi” into the search function – which is of course powered by Bing – the user is shown all of the sushi restaurants in the immediate area plotted on a map. From that screen the user can get directions, ring a restaurant or read reviews.
The web browser is based around the same code as the desktop Internet Explorer, and there is full support for multi-touch gestures such as pinching to zoom. But just like the iPhone, Adobe Flash support won’t be present at launch.
So that’s it. It all looks pretty simple to use, and smart too. But one burning question remains: what about apps?
With the actual launch to consumers still so far away, Microsoft said it would reveal more details about the applications that will be available on the platform at its Remix conference later this year.
Is Microsoft cool enough to have its own mobile phone?
Feb 15th
It’s Mobile World Congress this week and the perfect time for new players to enter the market. But can tech giant Microsoft pull it off?
Do you remember the days when software and technology companies would only really offer one product, but that product would actually be really good? Everyone would have it and it just became the norm. Microsoft loved those days, the days before it had so many competitors, days when it didn’t have to ‘cool’, it was just geeky.
Now, brand is more important than ever, and even more important for companies is that they now need to be seen with their fingers in many pies - that they’re down with the kids.
Microsoft will this week unveil the Microsoft Windows 7 for Mobile operating system, but what’s even more interesting is it will also be unveiling Windows 7 Mobile handsets.
Microsoft has been pretty busy these past couple of years - busy competing that is.
You have to remember that Microsoft could once do no wrong. It’s products weren’t very sexy but they certainly made our lives easier. But the company perhaps become a little complacent, it took its eyes off the ball and started building Xbox.
Then it had to play catch-up, that’s what Zune was all about. Bing is more about looking for other revenue streams while it watches Apple steal away customers (although Microsoft still has a ninety-something share of the OS market, people are switching because Apple is cooler).
So now it is building a mobile phone. This is perhaps Microsoft’s last chance to really hit the market place big time and offer something unique that will finally set it aside from it’s competitors such as Google and Apple.
The phone, which looks similar to a Blackberry, will have to be a ‘must have’ item. But will it be hot and sexy enough to attract consumers to camp out at mobile phone retailers to be first to have one?
Microsoft’s decision to enter the mobile phone market reflects a broader push inside the company to bring a bigger element of ‘cool’ to its brand - which is usually known as ‘functional’ (I am here reminded of those Window 7 ads…there was no one cool in those, just people functioning, often stupidly).
But it’ll have to go some way to convince consumers.
Microsoft’s early lead in smartphone software was built on its strong practical appeal to corporate IT departments, which wanted to move applications they had developed for other Windows operating systems on to mobile handsets.
It’s popular with the geeks - but even they are losing interest. The company’s share of the smartphone business has withered as consumers have turned to cooler handsets and often kept these for work as well.
According to comScore, Microsoft’s share of smartphone software had slipped to 18% in the US in the final quarter of last year, while Apple’s iPhone claimed 25% of the market.
There certainly is a lot of ground to catch up on for Microsoft. The handset won’t just have to ‘wow’ consumers, it’ll have to shock them. And the ad campaign will have to be a hell of a lot better than those Windows 7 ads.
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