June 04, 2007 | Monday
Microsoft: Assembling the Beatles of search?
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in News |Search Engines |Google |Yahoo |Microsoft |Search Technology
I love it when geeks are referred to as “rock stars”. I’m glad I’m not the only one who reveres the thinkers and scientists who come up with the technologies that make our lives so much better and easier. I’m not sure how their groupies compare to the ones that actual rock stars get, but the gossip is generally more interesting than anything Fleet Street produces.
Mike Arrington at TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft is trying to take its search technology to another level with a new breed of its own superstars:
Microsoft has gathered a team of twenty or more “rock star” developers who’ve been tasked at building their next generation search engine, a source has told us. The team, which supposedly came together recently, is based at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley headquarters in Mountain View. We have few details on their approach to the product, other than hearing that it is definitely a “horizontal” engine (so, it’s not limited to a specific vertical like images), and is “very cool.”
Microsoft moved Sanaz Ahari down to Silicon Valley to lead the project. Ahari was previously on the Live.com team, and was reportedly the youngest lead product manager in Microsoft history at 23. She was part of the core team that developed the start.com product, which was later renamed live.com.
Neither Sanaz Ahari nor Microsoft PR has responded to email enquiries for confirmation or more information.
This is good news for all customers - advertisers, agencies, and individuals who search: Microsoft is serious about being the best, and seems to be putting a great deal of its vast resources towards improving search for searchers and those whose businesses rely on search. You can bet that no matter how pretty Google might be sitting right now, they are not resting on their laurels, and will be upping their game accordingly.
Microsoft needs to identify what key thing is going to differentiate their search engine from Google’s - and the rest of the crowd’s for that matter, but like a lot of companies in a lot of sectors these days, Google is their main competition. Google was able to triumph over AltaVista (remember that?) back in the late 1990s because AltaVista was broken, and Google wasn’t plastered with intrusive, annoying ads. Google is not broken, and is still free of banners and buttons, so to take market share from them will require some major difference in Microsoft, something that makes a searcher say, “You know what? I’m using Microsoft this time,” and gets them to keep saying it.
Google is already being lambasted on the privacy issue (and, as of today, how their technology aids terrorists). Google does have areas of weakness, or perceived weakness, and it’s up to their competitors to capitalise on them.
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