Submitted by BBC News reports that Microsoft has come up with an interesting strategy to increase usage of its Live Search service: it is “offering “cold, hard cash” to persuade users to shop online using its Live Search engine and help the company catch up to rival Google. The savings range between 2% and 30% on products sold by select retailers through its so-called cashback service… ‘2008 is the year that search got competitive,’ said Bill Gates.”
That’s right. If we can’t compete on quality we can out spend everyone else. And people wonder why they are going down the drain.
This is not entirely true. The problem here is with perception. Google has become the household name but if you look at the search results from live and google, both have their strengths.
Similarly video search is much better in live where you can just put the mouse pointer on a video and it plays briefly making it very easy to find videos without opening each one of them.
Live image search’s UI is also better than google as you don’t need to click next page, next page etc.
But still people prefer Google. So giving these incentives is just one way to attact people to try and use live. Ofcourse if they don’t like it they will not stick with live.
>but if you look at the search results from live and
>google, both have their strengths.
Yes…I really like being asked “I see your searching for information on Indiana Jones, would you like 10 pages of information about Indian Bones?”
Live results suck ass.
Even people working on Live Search admit that the search results of Google are much better. And it’s very hard for them, if possible, to catch up.
What MS tries instead is to compete with unique features. For example the user interface, extra stuff like celebrity rating or bird’s eye in the maps part — which is awesome.
That’s just the reality in the market today. And it’s also plausible, Google is damn good at this and even as everybody else now also uses the PageRank algorithm, Google is years ahead on this topic.
Really? Have a link?
Silly me. I had the audacity to ask for a reference for the preceding assertion — that Live Search folks think that Google is better — and got modded down because of it. Whoever did it has the emotional maturity of a two-year old.
What does “quality” have to do with it? Nearly all the search engines return similar results now. Quality has nothing to do with it. It’s really more about economy of scale. Google has such a headstart in the market based on brand recognition and advertising monetization that Microsoft, Yahoo, and others need to do something different. So, kudos to them for changing the game.
I forget when Yahoo! started doing search instead of just human-edited indexing, but didn’t AltaVista have the head-start for web searches? Google had the better technology.
Would I get any cash back if I purchase a Linux computer or a Mac?
Edited 2008-05-22 17:15 UTC
May call this a bribe, some may call this lack of innovation in the websearch by Microsoft. I’d rather use whats good, you can keep your cash.
I don’t shop online, so it’s irrelevant to me.
Computers at the Lab are installed with IE7 which spots a Live search box. I tried a few times, but the results were never satisfying.
I’d rather open the Google search page than use the conveniently located search box…
@shyouko: Luckily you can still conveniently use Google in IE7, just open the drop-down search combo and select “Find More Providers”. If you click on Google you can even select it as a default search engine in one step.
Edited 2008-05-22 20:38 UTC
Unluckily IE settings in the Lab are not saved and the Lab tech refuses to make everyone’s favourite the default.
Good that we have Portable Firefox. But since it is not the default browser, when you want to open a link on your desktop or from the news reader…
If I can get a discount, ill use it, plain and simple.
I will find exactly what I want using google then just before purchase use Live to get my discount
I’m proud, not stupid!
Just a note to all, Google did the same thing a couple years back; $10 off participating merchants. If I remember correctly I got my discount at Shop4Tech. So it is not like this is really “news”. But I suppose this is enough to get the anti-MS conspirators going, so have fun.
Typical. A market isn’t “competitive” until Microsoft decides to enter it, just like a technology isn’t “invented” until Microsoft implements it.
*Yawn*
You have to agree that the search market is anything but competitive right now, what with Google absolutely dominating it. What’s wrong with Microsoft making it competitive by offering cash incentives? Car dealers do it all the time…standard practice. I welcome some search shakeup.
Search is quite different from, say, the OS market, or the accounting software market. Switching search engines is trivial, even for relatively inexperienced users. If Google were simply the only player which could afford to put together an infrastructure up to the task that would be one thing. But Microsoft has more money to spend than Google, and an infrastructure in place. Yahoo has an infrastructure in place. Other smaller players do too. And it’s not like Microsoft’s name is not even better known than Google’s. And it’s not like Microsoft does not use Windows/IE to try to steer people to its search engine. So I just don’t see any artificial market forces of any note in Google’s favor. Google beat Microsoft and Yahoo on search quality and so people use Google. So badly, in fact, that it appears Microsoft is having to pay customers to use their gratis service since they apparently couldn’t give it away.
The “car dealer” example that you give regards a pay for product, and not a free service that user’s seem not to want even for free.
Edit: I should probably be more clear on that point that while I see nothing *wrong* with providing cash incentives, I do find it *amusing* that the Microsoft giant, with all those mind boggling resources, has had to resort to this. :-0
Edited 2008-05-22 23:13 UTC
Google has ties with Apple, Firefox etc. to make sure their search engine is the default.
IE7 actually offers you an option if you want to change the default live.com the first time you start it. Neither Safari nor Firefox offer that option on install.
Edited 2008-05-23 01:14 UTC
Perhaps you haven’t noticed… but Firefox and Safari are not exactly dominating the browser market, even by the most optimistic estimates.
Regarding the Paypal comparison in your other post, I am not familiar with the cash back policy to which you refer. But I would say that although it’s not quite so trivial to change one’s payment processor as one’s search engine, that is another market where free competition appears to be operating pretty well. The reviews I have seen of Google Checkout have been rather luke warm. (Then again, I’m not sure I’ve seen any glowing reviews of *any* processor.)
Google does search very, very well, indeed. Payment processing, perhaps not as well by comparison. I don’t really know.
I do believe that looking at the world through your anti-Google glasses has caused you to mistake me for a Google cheerleader. (The Us vs Them view point is quite popular here on OSAlert.) I have great respect for Google as a company. But don’t think that it bothers me when someone points out one of the many other areas where they are not superior to the competition at this time.
Edited 2008-05-23 06:13 UTC
Perhaps you missed the point entirely. The point is Google is not relying on just their brand name recognition to gain popularity. They have been actively forging deals with PC makers and other avenues to make their search engine the default.
Market share of what they are bundling it with has nothing to do with it. In fact, Microsoft offers the customer a choice to change the default at start of day. The others don’t.
The competitors are equally good or in some cases better. I consider Google’s video search to be broken because it only offers results from its own service. That is a fundamental bug.
Au contraire, I used to be Anti-Microsoft at one point. I only have a PC circa 2002 that I resurrected because my wife needs Windows for work. That’s how I know what IE7 does when you first install it.
Google is a good company but it is no Angel that every one make them out to be.
Google has resorted to every tactic Microsoft has used in the past to gain market dominance.
Google is no different than Microsoft when it comes to paying for market share. Google has similar deals, and it pays OEMs to put that crappy Google Desktop on their machines (which I immediately remove), make Google the default search engine, etc. And, frankly, their search results are just average. Most search engines return the same results on a comparative basis, so you can get off your high horse about Google doing search “very, very well.” The results and performance of search engines has gotten so similar that it’s downright boring…
So does Google for Google checkout. I find it amusing that Google the all mighty search giant with all those resources has to pay people to use checkout because paypal is beating it so badly.
It sounds much like dumping… doesn’t it?
Criticize MS all you want, I got 40 bucks back from a laptop purchase. If MS wants to share the wealth, I’m going to take full advantage of it.
Edited 2008-05-23 21:33 UTC
The Google fanboys are out in force today. They mod down anything which questions pro-Google dogma.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with your charming personality.
“Criticize MS all you want, I got 40 bucks back from a laptop purchase. If MS wants to share the wealth, I’m going to take full advantage of it.”
It shouldn’t be surprising that the people that are unwillingly sponsoring your laptop has opinions about it.
If someone else tried to sell you stuff you really needed where 80% of the price was pure profit for them you probably would complain too.
Even if the noble goal was for them to take a bigger part of a market they couldn’t get without funding it with your money.
Edited 2008-05-25 09:06 UTC