Though these companies make no money from browsers, they are the essential gateway to the internet. Currently Microsoft has market share with the runners and riders standing as:

• Internet Explorer 65.7 per cent of users
• Mozilla’s Firefox, with 23.8 per cent
• Apple’s Safari 4.2 per cent
• Google’s Chrome 3.2 per cent

In essence, Google has created what some people believe to be a stealth based plug-in that allows IE users to download the plug-in with the IE browser, claiming that by doing so web pages load quicker and you can have access to a wider array of software applications.

Microsoft, who has already had their fingers burnt with antitrust court cases, is cautious on attacking Google directly and says that by downloading the plug-in the user is open to security risks – which Google denies.

Is this VHS v Betamax? Time will tell.

Times have certainly changed and though the route to market may be blurred at times, what is clear is that the mobile space is one in witch Microsoft must show more urgency.

Having been slow on the take up and growth of the internet, the Seattle based company doesn’t want to be seen to be napping and has pulled the stops out on interesting and dare I say engaging advert that is currently doing the rounds in the US.

The most interesting element of the spot is the inclusion Microsoft has made of all the various brands it once saw as a rival. This, to me, sees the company maturing to the brave new world of collaborative engagement and giving the customer what ‘they’ want as well as endearing Microsoft to its existing user base a little more.

Advertising aside, Microsoft have a big mountain to climb with most phone manufactures going with the more popular mobile OS systems out there. Symbian, Android, iPhone and Blackberry platforms will make sure that Microsoft’s ad agency has its work cut out

There is no doubt that if you use paid search as a part of your online marketing strategy, Google has been front and center and an obvious choice for the past few years.  On the other hand, Microsoft’s search engine has all-too-often been viewed by marketers as a peripheral option and a non-essential media buy with not enough traffic to justify the time you would have to spend implementing and managing it. Because of this, it was common to simply be left off of the schedule entirely.

Since the new deal could deliver Bing as much as 28%* of the US search market share, or around 4.1 billion monthly searches, from the perspective as a marketer, the question is this; Is Bing now a must-have on the PPC media schedule?

Although the partnership will leave Bing far behind Google in terms of market share, Microsoft has eliminated a competitor and now has a fairly compelling argument to take to advertisers.

Assuming that Google does have to share the paid search media schedule with Bing, this perhaps leads to a more concerning question for the search giant; where is the budget going to come from?

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts

(* Yahoo! Sites – 20.1%, Microsoft Sites – 8.4% ComScore June ’09)

In essence, the fait accompli was almost inevitable given Google’s dominance in the search space. Alongside the worsening search ad revenues of the respective number 2 and 3 in the market, the Seattle giant really had to push this deal to appease shareholders. With both companies announcing poor results last week, the deal will also help boost moral and regain some bravado with disgruntled Microsoft  staff probably sick an tired of playing 2nd (& 3rd) fiddle to the incumbent leader.

So what does the future hold?

Well, if the recent uptake of Bing and the ongoing rebrand of Yahoo!, with it user generated facility is anything to go by; the folks at Mountain View may want to re examine where their focus lies. Mass investment in Android, Chrome OS, Maps/Street View etc, may be reviewed if the momentum in the tie-up gathers pace. Augmented to all the hoo-ha is the recent news that after 3 years, a $1billion investment made by Google for 5% of AOL was finally bought back by AOL’s parent, Time Warner for a mere $283 million. Do the math.

If I could be anywhere tonight– a fly on the wall with newly weds,  Bartz and Balmer would be my first choice….watch this space.

However, as cute as this is – the key question from a marketing perspective is how is Microsoft is planning to generate traffic volume.

• The current adCenter platform for advertisers is a challenge.
• The volumes are not available and the interface itself a chore to use!
• How can you justify running on any advertising which is clearly costing you more to facilitate than the return achievable.

Due to some of these points, Microsoft Adcenter is often left off the media schedule. The benefits for pushing advertisers onto AdCenter rather than running the budget on Google is often overshadowed by the time and effort it takes to use the archaic functionality.

Bing has a great concept – ‘Help me decide what I am looking for’ and the hype around it so far is promising. However without the volumes it still remains dead in the water. Historically, Microsoft has paid people to use their search engine and this hasn’t worked before. Does it simply come back to the fact that Google’s search results are still more relevant?

Microsoft will have to do a lot more to have Google quaking in their boots – Bing or otherwise…

All this being announced less than seven months since the departure of  founder Bill Gates from the day to day running of the company.

Heather Bellini, a technology analyst at UBS in New York, told Bloomberg News that Microsoft would get a poor hearing from investors unless it acted quickly to trim its cost base in response to one of the worst recessions since the Second World War.
“I don’t care if they get rid of contractors, full-time employees, facilities, health benefits – just get the costs out,” she said.

The Seattle-based software multinational disappointed Wall Street with an 11% slump in quarterly profits to $4.17bn (£3bn).

The company’s shares slumped 8% to $17.77 within minutes of the start of trading on New York’s Nasdaq exchange, hitting their lowest level since 1998.

100 days after the launch of its browser ‘Chrome’, Google announced that it will take this out of beta phase, probably secure with the fact that 10million people have downloaded it.

The announcement couldn’t be more time as Microsoft announced last night that it has some serious security issues with its Internet Explorer browser as recently reported on the BBC

On the official Google blog, VP of product management Sundar Pichai and engineering director Linus Upson said, “Since we released Google Chrome, the development team has been improving the stability and overall performance of the browser. In just 100 days we’ve reached more than 10m active users around the world and released 14 updates to the product.

“Chrome is a better browser today thanks to the many users who sent their feedback and the many more who enabled automatic crash reports, helping us rapidly diagnose and fix issues,” they added.

Chrome has quite a way to go before it catches up with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer but I remember someone back in 2001 at AltaVista saying the same thing about a little company called Google….

]]> http://www.digital-clarity.com/blog/general/googles-chrome-looking-to-shine-as-microsoft-internet-explorer-security-alert-announced/feed 0 http://www.digital-clarity.com/blog/general/on-the-rebound-yahoo-goes-back-to-microsoft http://www.digital-clarity.com/blog/general/on-the-rebound-yahoo-goes-back-to-microsoft#comments Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:00:54 +0000 Reggie James http://domain1156022.sites.fasthosts.com/blog/?p=3 Read the Rest...]]> It is often said that one should never look a gift horse in the mouth. This little gem of wisdom is always applied with a good dose of hindsight and in this case is applicable to the once mighty search giant Yahoo! and more aptly, to it’s beleaguered Chief Executive Jerry Yang’s attempt at trying to resurrect some form of deal with Microsoft. A deal that Yang and his board walked away from a few months ago.

Though Steve Ballmer, the legendry sales guru and more recently CEO of Microsoft has totally ruled out any takeover, he has left the tiniest of door opening by saying that he may consider some form of tie-up around paid search.
This is a shrewd move by Ballmer who has give the classic corporate stance of ‘Microsoft have moved on’…to knowing deep down inside that any form of collaboration that involved Microsoft taking even the slightest of chunks from mega rival Google’s market share would probably elevate him into demigod status at the Software companies Seattle HQ.

Watch this space….

The underlying platform that unites these 2 quotes is Google. Google not only proved Bill Gates wrong and led to his continual game of catch up was the company form Mountain View. Equally, the company that created an economy from web browsing was Google.

Now Google has launched ‘Chrome’ it’s new web browser that will go head to head with Microsoft’s new IE8 browser. Microsoft has dominated the Browser market through OEM bundles with all the major PC and Laptop providers and currently has 72% market share, worldwide.

What has spiced the launch of Microsoft’s IE8 and had all the pundits, blogs and forums buzzing is that earlier in the week, Microsoft issued a statement as part of a press release saying that the NEW IE8 would have a ‘privacy’ button that would wipe and block any third party cookies or tracking elements that shows a users history on the sites they visit. This data is used by advertiser to target their communication to the right people at the right time, to ultimately sell more relevant products or services.

The prospective blocking or erasing of this data would have serious repercussions for banner or graphical based advertising that in many ways has kept the internet free for consumers visiting and accessing data, products and information – YouTube, Bebo, MySpace etc are examples of advertising reliant sites that allow fir mass communication without charging the user and entrance fee or membership fee.

So, why would Microsoft launch this bizarre offensive? Simple, to take a swipe at Google’s recent launch of it new graphical based ad servicing technology after their acquisition of DoubleClick. Feeling threatened and having already quietly developed the browser, Google’s launch of Chrome was another stroke of genius that stamped all over the new improved version of what would be IE8.

Currently, IE8 is now a distant memory and all the talk is about Chrome and the various ASP applications that will become available including a spreadsheet package that will apparently make the ubiquitous excel look like an abacus.