Tough Love For Microsoft Search is an excellent and thorough blog post from Danny Sullivan that takes Microsoft to task on search. Unlike others, Danny offers some suggestions for what to do. I like two of them
What do I know though…search is a long way from my expertise but I enjoyed Danny’s insights and suggestions. I wonder if we’ll take him up on any?
[update]
I liked SpragueD’s idea on my FriendFeed even better
Sullivan's idea was almost right. Microsoft is ubiquitous on the desktop and they should aim for the same in search. Why not buy Search.com and brand Microsoft Search. Then people would "[Microsoft] Search it." - Sprague D
back in January of 2007 I work a post suggesting that Microsoft needed to start over .. maybe I should repost it :)
http://www.winextra.com/index.php/2007/01/27/time-for-a-skunkworks-project/
How much do people think Microsoft could get search.com for? There's a lot of value to that name, I mean think about the value of pizza and vodka.com?
I really hope Microsoft is looking for other ways to search, well it's a reasonable assumption that they are but I really like what Ballmer said recently... "If you think a search in ten years is going to be the same 10 blue links I'd like to disagree".
CES may be the place it all gets into motion but I am really hoping that:
a) 2009 is the year that great mobile search happens, it's quite overdue from all companies.
b) Results start to get more real word context, and perhaps more social. Why can't my friends influence my results and my colleauges do the same?
I think as it stands Microsoft search is just as good if not better than Google and I prefer MS as a company so I use their product, the word of mouth idea could work but from my knowledge of psychology this is a much more difficult task- it's like the Pepsi challenge all over again.
Again I think this is a place where advertising and features are important. I just wish there was a way to get ideas out there!
Whatever it takes to get the name then get the name
User mindshare is the ingress channel to adding significantly to a (possible) billion dollar business.