January 26, 2004

This is so Microsoft

Posted by Scott at 06:18 AM

Technology rant - From today's Wall Street Journal -

Microsoft Corp. Monday will introduce a new Web search feature as the software maker plays catch-up with Google Inc. in a critical area of Internet commerce.

Microsoft will begin offering customers of its MSN online service a software "toolbar" for Internet browsers that has a window for searching the Web using keywords and phrases. The toolbar, which sits below the control panel on a browser, includes shortcut buttons to other Microsoft services such as Hotmail e-mail and its MSN Messenger product.

The software mimics similar offerings from rival Yahoo Inc., as well as from Google, and is a critical part of Microsoft's plan to launch its own Internet search service later this year. With the toolbar, Microsoft hopes to pull millions of Internet users to its search technology, and in turn to other Microsoft services and online advertisers. (emphasis mine)

Lot of folks could see this coming. If there's a big computing technology market out there, Microsoft leverages its existing positions and is willing to lose a lot of money initially to be number one there. There's been the browser wars (Internet Explorer), the PDA battles (PocketPC), internet service providers (MSN), game consoles (Xbox). They see a market that others have established and decide that they must now take it over. In all cases the initial product is nothing to write home about but they keep banging away at it until they dominate that market. I don't doubt that they'll soon have an online music store with tight integration to their existing software suite. All the music will be in their proprietary Windows Media Player format. It's not that far of a stretch to picture that in a decade cell phones have a Microsoft OS in them. After all, Microsoft has started a push to be inside of automobiles.

Regarding this search engine foray, several months ago I saw their web spiders/robots starting to make their rounds. I configured my website to specifically block their spider. To their web crawler it looks like this site isn't there. It won't matter one penny to Microsoft (big deal that they can't index a personal website), but it was a somewhat symbolic gesture. We have quality services like Google, Yahoo, AltaVista in the search space and I don't want to see Microsoft step in that space and put them out of business with another one of their "bundling" "value adds" of a search toolbar.

Comments

Hi scott,
Thanks for putting all the pictures up, especially the ones of my God-daughter! Did Mom let you know, there is a better chance that I will be able to come down in August. I am so excited! That way I can really hit the beach! And now I have a cell phone to call Seth on instead of using a phone card- oh wait, i'll be out of my area so it will be long distance- denied!

Posted by: Suzy at January 27, 2004 09:26 AM

Hi Suzy,

An August visit sounds great! Mom may have mentioned the lake up near Greenfield (which is less than half an hour away) and of course you can visit the coast. While the NH coast is pretty cool, I think you should make a day trip of it and see Maine's coast around Ogunquit. Start here:

http://bilikfamily.com/MVPictures/Sep3/13.html

and browse a bit. There's also Pitcher mountain near our house with a relatively short hike up to the top:

http://bilikfamily.com/Pictures/2003/Aug/24/7.html

All in all, there's probably more to do in August -- and unlike our last house, we have central air in this one! ;-)

Posted by: Scott at January 27, 2004 11:31 AM