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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Microsoft, Yahoo and Google

All the three companies above have in their own way revolutionized the world of computers. There are more similarities between these software giants than what meets the eye.

Microsoft with its windows series of products has dominated worlds PC market for nearly two decades now. Virtually a whopping 95% of worlds PCs run on Microsoft OS. As you must have heard in the spider man movies, with great power comes great responsibility. But often power is misused. There are many instances of Microsoft bullying in world of software. Microsoft introduced its flagship product MS Office for its windows OS in 1989. At that time the dominant office suite included WordPerfect (Novell) and Lotus 123(IBM). As you might have guessed after introduction of MS Office both the applications were gone from the PC market in a few years. How did Microsoft achieve this within a short period??? Later anti trust litigations against Microsoft accused MS using what one calls as “UNDOCUMENTED API CALLS” in its Office products. While Novell and IBM where made to work with APIs provided by Microsoft to develop their office applications. MS was accused of hiding those system call interfaces which would perform the task faster and efficiently than documented API calls given to Novell and IBM thus giving unfair advantage to its products then its rivals. Another instance of dirty business tactics happened when internet revolution was burgeoning. As you might all know Netscape navigator was a very successful browser used during the mid 1990s. As usual Microsoft never likes people running non Microsoft products on Microsoft OS. It decided to ship its own browser the Internet Explorer (IE) along with its windows’98. IE was there right on the users desktop as users default browser, MS made IE free. No marks for guessing what happened in a few years time. Netscape went along the way WordPerfect and Lotus 123 did, into the software ruins. Instead of using giving the users the choice it just thrusted IE in the hands of users (IE did win the browser war cause it was as good as Netscape, So most users didn’t feel the need to switch over). The majority of criticism of MS has been for its business tactics, often described with the motto "EMBRACE, EXTEND AND EXTINGUISH". Microsoft initially embraces a competing standard or product, then extends it to produce their own incompatible version of the software or standard, which in time extinguishes competition that does not or cannot use Microsoft's new version. These and other tactics have led to various companies and governments filing lawsuits against Microsoft. In fact in 2002 Microsoft lost a lawsuit against it (for abusing its monopoly in PC OS to make users use its own product), the judge ordered the Microsoft to be split into two separate companies (People will remember what happened to BELL Corp in telecom sector when it had monopoly of the phone market, it was split into 7 companies to encourage competition). But the shrewd businessman Gates was, a handsome donation to George W Bush’s election Campaign ensured, MS escaped with appeal by just paying a huge compensation to Sun Microsystems and other Companies. Gates ensured his goose which laid the Golden Egg remained intact, the split was averted.

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