Microsoft’s new boss Steve Ballmer certainly understands
where his company is in the search and online advertising business.
He told
Currently, ComScore says MSN-Windows Live Search websites
cover only 3% of the search market.
Yahoo! is at 11%, and Google dominates at 68%.
This excludes
He dismissed the failed attempt to buy Yahoo!, “acquiring Yahoo! is not key to becoming number two in search. Acquiring Yahoo! was really about picking up a base of advertisers that would help us because the advertisers are part of the product in search . . . and having more advertisers helps you deliver better, more relevant ads. But we have a great team working that are focused in on this issue and right now we are focused on becoming number two. Then we can focus on becoming number one.”
As for Google as Goliath, Ballmer isn’t worried, “Google is
a fine company and I am sure they will continue to get some good fortune but
they are going to get competition and they are really only in one narrow era –
search. It's huge, but there are so many things in information technology that
they haven't even begun to scratch yet.
One example Ballmer pointed to was the “Googlephone” that runs the Android operating system. Compared to Windows Mobile, “It’s a V1 [the first German rocket in World War II]. They got a long way to go. A long way.”
Although the credit markets are frozen or close to it, Ballmer says Microsoft isn’t immune to the wider world. Still, he figures the real impact at his company will be in lower profits rather than losses and, perhaps, a slower increase in headcount. But he is still talking like a man whose business is going to grow – and in 5 years, maybe he’ll be second in search.
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