Beef or Baloney: Ballmer on Search
June 19, 2009
Paddling around the polluted pond the addled goose calls home, I was thinking about TGDaily’s “Steve Ballmer Admits Microsoft’s Biggest Mistake”. Mr. Ballmer allegedly said at a talk to the once mighty business barons of Chicago:
“I would probably say I would start sooner on search,” Ballmer stated to the crowd. Ballmer stressed that the company knew of search the research and effort had been put in, they weren’t sure of the market and that they had no business model. It just wasn’t there. The company lacked in an application for their findings. In an optimistic tone however, and speaking of the new “decision engine” Bing, he stated “we’ve got our mojo back now” and it’s “the little engine that could.”
Okay, mojo is back. The Google has been zipping along for 11 years. Microsoft bought a search vendor for $1.2 billion and the police problem with that company in Norway won’t go away. Powerset, which Microsoft bought for $100 million, uses technology that is in part based on older innovations from Xerox PARC.
I am on the fence with regards to Microsoft and search. My hunch is that Mr. Ballmer speaks the truth as he perceives it. Context is everything in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, June 19, 2009
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