microsoft

I realize that what I am about to write is a stretch but just go with it for a minute. In the past week we have seen Google act as if they are standing up to the Chinese government by not censoring their search results and thus risking expulsion from the world’s largest market. A market in which they are getting beat. Now Microsoft is...[read more]

Microsoft used to be considered the king of feature creep.  Here was Microsoft Word when it was most cluttered: I don’t use any of Microsoft’s software anymore, but from what I hear they’ve toned down the feature creep a lot in recent versions of Windows and Word. Google has been adding so many new features to its results page,...[read more]

So it’s really come down to this? News Corp is thinking about inking a deal with Microsoft/Bing whereby not only will Bing get access to News Corp data (WSJ, Fox, etc.) but they’ll also prevent Google from indexing their sites. This sounds like a lose/lose/lose/lose proposition. News Corp loses - fewer page views, less revenue for...[read more]

A couple of interesting studies came out this week that help us better understand the direction of entrepreneurship in our economy.A study by Microsoft suggests the most of the new entrepreneurs today are either accidental entrepreneurs or at least not folks who had aspired to become an entrepreneur before the recession. The study found...[read more]

By Frank ReedWhile talk swirls around Twitter on subjects ranging from video to revenue to biz plans and Biz’s plans, there is one that keeps coming up because it is pretty important. How do you search Twitter and mine it for the nuggets of wisdom amongst the wasteland of wackiness? Last week we told you about the unholy alliance talks...[read more]

Lots of buzz around Twitter talking to both Google and Microsoft about data mining deals. As reported, Twitter would license their entire feed to one or both of the search giants. Kara Swisher at the BoomTown blog broke the news.  A deal of this type would allow Google and Microsoft to add detailed Twitter...[read more]

There are two broad philosophical approaches to explaining the forces that drive world events. The first one is sometimes called the Great man theory, neatly summarized by the quote ”the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” This view was famously espoused by the philosopher Hegel and later Nietzche, who called...[read more]

Last weekend, we watched Casino Royale on the beach in Slovenia, just up the Adriatic coast from Montenegro, where the story takes place. I love the scenes at the poker table, particularly the one where Bond goes all in and loses all his money. And that scene was in my mind when I was reading my friend Jason Calacanis' wonderful post,...[read more]

The top link on techmeme right now is yesterday’s post by Jason Calacanis titled “Yahoo committed seppukku today.” It is worth reading because it powerfully (and hilariously) lays out the position that handing over search to Microsoft is a huge mistake for Yahoo. It is a position I am very familiar with, because I made much of the same...[read more]

By Frank Reed Just last week the earliest of the early reports claimed that Bing had made some impact in the search engine arms race. Those numbers were met with a fair amount of skepticism due to the timing etc. Now Mashable reports that Compete.com has released US traffic stats that shows Bing is making some progress in more than just...[read more]

This is the first of a two part series on how the boundaries of search are being pushed beyond the familiar Google-style broad Web search. Tomorrow I will discuss real time search. I recently spoke with Eric Rogge of Exalead about how search is playing an expanded role for enterprises inside and outside the firewall. He mentioned that...[read more]

A day after my last post on how traditional media is deteriorating, Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, argued that traditional media will not bounce back, all content consumed will be digital, we can debate if that may be in one, two, five or ten years. In some respects the...[read more]

Microsoft Corp’s Bing search engine won more market share from rivals last week, according to new industry data, but still trails Google Inc and Yahoo Inc considerably. Challenging market leader Google — which in turn is looking to break into Microsoft’s core software market — is a long-term project, said Microsoft chief executive Steve...[read more]

It is an interesting juxtaposition to have GM file for bankruptcy the same day that Microsoft launches its new search engine Bing. It would be difficult to find a clearer illustration of how the shift from atoms to bits is transforming industries. It is not just the recession that is causing a smaller demand for cars — the demand will...[read more]

Microsoft, home of the Zune, has just announced that they're going to launch Bing, a rebranding and reformatting of their search engine. So far, they've earmarked $100 million just for the marketing. Bing, of course, stands for But It's Not Google. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that it is trying to be the next Google. And the...[read more]

What a day for tech news yesterday. If you didn’t hear all about Microsoft announcing their new search decision engine, Bing, and Google trying to steal their thunder by announcing Wave, welcome back from your comma. I think both products look amazing and think that both could be game changers, but does anyone think its interesting...[read more]

The frontpage of Techmeme is simply stunning at the moment. So many important things happening: Google announcing an attempt to completely remake communication and joint document production with Wave. See “Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave” on the Google blog. Microsoft is trying to get back into the search game with Bing. It...[read more]

Google announced and released a number of innovations to their core search product this week, including search options and support for microformats/RDFa. What I think is most interesting about this is not so much the specifics of what they have done, but that they continue to innovate in core search. This contrasts with several other big...[read more]

With the newspaper business in apparent freefall, it's perhaps useful to tally up some of the various winners and losers among the incumbent business models as compared to 1994, the year the commercial web began to take off. It appears that there are multiple ways to be disrupted, that some industries are far better off than they were...[read more]

I usually sleep in on Sunday’s but I’ve got a 16-mile run and want to meet Amy at the end of it at 10:30 for brunch.  So – good morning 5am and my normal daily reading routine. I ran across a lot of intriguing stuff this morning that I thought I’d share with you. I encourage you to trade your TV watching time for a handful of clicks...[read more]