The recently awarded search and advertising deal that Microsoft just landed with Facebook and the acquisition and implementation of JellyFish’s cashback program into Live Search have really impressed me. Regardless of the potential on-again, off-again Microhoo deal, Microsoft’s aggressive strategy towards strengthening its foothold in web-based applications and services has me thinking that it’s not the old stuffy bundled-up one trick software pony I used to know and actually reminds me of the old Google. That is, their Live Search Cashback program was a very bold and game-changing move that turned out to be a success, boosting their search traffic 15% in just one month. Meanwhile Google has diverted towards implementing a near clone of Digg’s commenting system within their search interface and adopted Wikia’s people powered system for ranking its search results. All of this has me thinking that Microsoft is becoming more like the old innovative Google we once knew, and the Google of now may have lost its core focus due to its interest in renewable energy research.
Being a newly converted Mac owner and Apple evangelist myself I must say that Apple has made some really incredible moves in the electronics and computer industries. Notably becoming the number one brand of computers on college campuses nationwide, reinventing the portable music player with its iPod products, and revolutionizing the mobile phone market with its famed iPhone. However, other recent moves such as the iPhone 3G price drop marketing ploy with hiked service plan prices, the launching of a super buggy MobileMe service that’s lacking decent tech support, and its walled garden of mobile applications are reminiscent of the old over-promising under-delivering ways of Microsoft. The only clear difference here is that instead of locking us into a Microsoft-like signature software stranglehold, Apple has us in its great hardware headlock now.
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The eventual evolution of search engines and computing: “Microgoople” – taking the best ideas from all of them and…oh, no…wait. That would be bad, bad, bad. We’d be waving “goodbye” to Apple’s innovation and “hello” to a world run almost entirely by Microsoft and Google! That couldn’t be a good thing…right, Vista users?
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