Thursday, October 16, 2008

Desperate Microsoft


Have you heard of the saying desperate circumstances call for desperate measures? Well, I read recently, one of the interviews by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft that his company was not giving up on search in its fight against Google. He went as far as saying that it was like David vs. Goliath, with Microsoft being the David (This is funny considering the situation in mid 90's where Microsoft was the software bully making every other company play by its rules). Now you have the bully being bullied around. He went onto say that he was going to give the much needed push that Live Search needed. Well, now I understand what he meant by push, the Microsoft marketing team has come up with a desperate measure to combat Google. It’s called “Search Perks”, where you get gifts in the form of music downloads, air tickets, books, X-box games for every search you do on Live Search.

For people interested in how it works, you need to download and install MSN toolbar on your IE. For every 25 searches you do, you will be eligible to get points or tickets. When you accumulated 4950 points you cash in using the tickets for a prize. The top prize X Box wireless game controller, for which you have to get 5500 points, but there are only 198 days from the date of launch of service (Which is October 1) for it to end. Even with the maximum of 25 searches per day you get only 4950 points, which means nobody will ever be able to get the top prize. It seems Microsoft think tank, didn’t get quite work out the details when they launched the scheme. When somebody pointed out to this Microsoft spokes person that nobody can win the top prize. A pale faced Microsoft spokes person had to come up with a not so prepared answer that Microsoft will look into extending the Search Perks service depending on its initial response. To be frank, offering freebies ain’t going to drive people to Live Search. Poor Microsoft, they have all the money in the world, yet they seem to be short of innovation and inspiration. Of course you can’t forget how Microsoft flirted with Yahoo to buy the Search engine, only for Google to come in between and sweep Yahoo of its feet by making Yahoo use Google Ad Sense. I shouldn’t be complaining about this, since I do for work for company, which itself believes strongly in the motto, “If you cant Develop them on your own, Buy them ..!! “ .

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