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Ballmer says its a long-term plan for search

Microsoft pulls no punches in its ambition to be at the top of internet search .Currently, Microsoft is in third place, far behind floundering Yahoo and market leader Google. Despite the fact that Yahoo's stock price continues to plummet, the venerable firm is still ahead of Microsoft's search engine in market share.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has maintained that without the purchase of Yahoo, Microsoft could get to where it wants to be in the search market, it would simply take more time. Ballmer said in a speech, “It’s going to take us a while. We've got a lot to do."

CNET News reports that Ballmer believes that Microsoft has to fundamentally change the experience and economics of search and redefine the category. Ballmer believes that Microsoft has taken steps in that direction.

Ballmer was asked about Microsoft's rumored Red Dog competitor to Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform. Ballmer was mum on the topic and declined to offer any advice on antitrust topics to Google and Yahoo during their bid for the unified advertising platform the companies are moving forward with.

During the question and answer portion of the speech, Ballmer was asked about the Seinfeld-Gates ads. Ballmer says, "It was a two-week campaign but man did it get people talking for more than two weeks."

Ballmer also says that he believes in five to ten years all of the one billion cell phones sold in a year will be Smartphones and believes software and hardware will be sold separately in the future. He went on to say he believes RIM and Apple will have a nice business, but will be niche products.

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Where are the Steve Ballmer ads?
By UNCjigga on 9/26/2008 2:38:24 PM , Rating: 2
Seriously, the reason why the Seinfeld ads failed is because they used Bill Gates. Sure, everyone knows his name and recognizes him as one of the richest guys in the world, but there's ZERO comedic value in pairing him with Seinfeld. You could see it on the screen--those two had no chemistry together!

Now if you had Ballmer playing a hyper-animated Kramer/Costanza type to calm/neutral Seinfeld, THAT would be comedy-effin'-gold!

"But we've got DEVELOPERS Jerry!! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!!!!!"




RE: Where are the Steve Ballmer ads?
By jimbojimbo on 9/26/2008 2:40:19 PM , Rating: 5
Honestly I think Bill Gates is funnier than Seinfeld.


RE: Where are the Steve Ballmer ads?
By zerocool84 on 9/26/2008 2:52:27 PM , Rating: 2
I love the show Seinfeld but they should have used someone different.


By paydirt on 9/30/2008 8:30:05 AM , Rating: 2
MSFT loves to spin! $100 million spent to get people talking (negatively) for two weeks. Ballmer really knows how to "invest" (throw away) money.


RE: Where are the Steve Ballmer ads?
By theapparition on 9/26/2008 2:45:49 PM , Rating: 5
I actually found the ads humorous. Gates was better than expected.

With that said......as a commercial to market a product.......it set a new standard for FAIL. MS's "I'm a PC campain" on the other hand is pure genious.

But maybe Ballmer's correct. We're still talking about 'em.


By foolsgambit11 on 9/27/2008 3:23:05 PM , Rating: 2
Well, I don't think people would have paid as much attention to the "I'm a PC" campaign without first drawing so much attention with the Seinfeld campaign. Whether the combined campaign was worth the combined price tag, I don't know.


RE: Where are the Steve Ballmer ads?
By Nekrik on 9/26/2008 3:48:58 PM , Rating: 3
They failed? They are a tiny part of an overall campaign and seem to have created a lot of discussion, exactally as they were intended to. Just because some people started to speculate that MS was 'dropping' Seinfeld after just two ads doesn't mean they were correct, it means some people made some incorrect assumptions which they pulled out of their asses.


RE: Where are the Steve Ballmer ads?
By TSS on 9/26/2008 5:03:45 PM , Rating: 4
it's the new way of marketing, don't be suprised that people are still adjusting to it. it even has a name, "viral marketing". there isn't a whole lot of history to find on it (in a quick search though), wikipedia saying the first mention of it was 1994. gamers have seen alot of this lately, cryptic sites with countdown timers, giving away hints untill zero hour.

the ads where a huge succes. it got people talking. people are still discussing them. and that is what matters. you've must have heard the phrase "there's no such thing as bad publicity".

you can compare it to the wii. the day that the name was announced, the majority of the web comics i read had a comic about the name. i saw it on every news site, even the tech ones. and the day after that, half of those sites had messages they where suprised by the buzz it generated.

it's no longer the message that counts, it's the buzz that the message generates. and vague messages get people talking alot more then crystal clear ones. which means well be seeing alot more of this kind of marketing.


So... PCs it is?
By michael2k on 9/26/2008 2:31:46 PM , Rating: 2
He thinks the smartphone industry will evolve to act like the PC industry?

How about the console industry, then? Or the car industry? Why would that be any different?




RE: So... PCs it is?
By omnicronx on 9/26/2008 2:55:48 PM , Rating: 4
He does not just think.. it already has.. Smartphones sales in total will be over 10 times more than the Iphone this year.

Although I don't agree with his statements that Windows mobile will rule the smartphone world, don't be surprised to see Windows mobile/Nokia/Android phones dominate the market real soon. And just so you know, windows mobile has a smartphone marketshare of around 12%, much higher than apples. Nokia is still the king at almost 50%.


RE: So... PCs it is?
By michael2k on 9/26/08, Rating: 0
RE: So... PCs it is?
By Pirks on 9/26/2008 3:15:02 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
It has traditionally been that you can pick and choose OS and hardware, but that was true for MP3 players too
Seems like you're pulling this outta your butt. Please show me where you could (or can) buy for example Sansa or Creative MP3 player with SEPARATELY AVAILABLE internal software which you could CHOOSE AND BUY SEPARATELY?


RE: So... PCs it is?
By OrSin on 9/26/2008 4:31:49 PM , Rating: 2
I'm hoping he meant software to download the music. I never seen any player that you could choose the software on it. Most you would be hard pressed to even hack it to change the interface. Some people do pull sh1t out of there a$s and think no one on the internet will call them on it.


RE: So... PCs it is?
By michael2k on 9/26/2008 4:31:55 PM , Rating: 1
End users cannot, but manufacturers could (if they chose to). The accurate comparison is to phones, where you can get a Treo with Palm or WinMo flavors, or a Razr with Linux or some internal derivative etc.

In that sense there were WinCE based PMP, Linux based PMP , Pixo based PMP (the iPod was one!), etc.


RE: So... PCs it is?
By Ryanman on 9/26/2008 4:48:38 PM , Rating: 3
not buy, but download. You can get different internal software for any of these over the internetz (without breaking a EULA).

Please stop arguing about the openess of the Apple software market - because it's not. everything Everywhere is more open then their locked in stuff. It's a business model, admittedly, but not one I like to partake in.


RE: So... PCs it is?
By Pirks on 9/26/08, Rating: 0
RE: So... PCs it is?
By Ryanman on 9/27/2008 4:48:16 PM , Rating: 2
Oh trust me boy, I "got it". How you could glorify Apple's price margins and draconian practices I don't understand. Nobody made a law that said they couldn't do any of it though, which is basically what I said. Attaway to take it personally and look like a prick to boot.


RE: So... PCs it is?
By Pirks on 9/27/08, Rating: -1
RE: So... PCs it is?
By Nimbo on 9/26/2008 4:56:13 PM , Rating: 2
You don't actually buy it. It is free open source and it's call Rockbox = A firmware ("OS") for several manufactures mp3 players that can replace original firmware to provide more functionality and efficiency.


RE: So... PCs it is?
By foolsgambit11 on 9/27/2008 3:19:32 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, but RockBox works on many iPods.

On topic, Ballmer's statement seemed more in spirit with the consumer being able to choose a different OS out of the box for their smart phone. I doubt this would come into being without also freeing phones from service providers.

The whole cellular experience would have to become a la carte. Pick a phone, pick an OS, pick a service provider. It's like the OP said, smart phones will have the PC model - pick hardware, pick software, pick ISP. It does make sense, since phone hardware looks to become more and more PC-like. Intel has ambitions to scale x86 to that form factor. Increased hardware power and standardization will allow OS's to become less optimized to a single platform, while still performing up to expectations.

Not if, but when the transition happens is the real question.


RE: So... PCs it is?
By akugami on 9/26/2008 6:17:37 PM , Rating: 2