skibum - 2:18 am on Feb 4, 2005 (gmt 0)

It doesn't seem like that "Butterfly" campaign did anything for Microsoft except piss off a whole bunch of people who didn't appreciate stickers all over the place in NYC. What the heck does that butterfly have to do with anything anyway? If we're promoting search of all things, it seems like a relevant campaign ought to be part of the plan.

Money thrown at promotion and advertising didn't get Google (or Yahoo! for that matter) where they are today. In the past MSFT has often been able to win battles at least in part by driving the price point to zero (IE, bundling Power Point with Office) but search is already free. It's personal habits MSFT has to change in the average person who is in most cases perfectly happy with G results. Even if they aren't happy with the search results, they seem to like the brand very much [webmasterworld.com] which says a lot about the public perception of G.

People flocked to G because they liked it, people told them about it & G very subtley appealed to them. MSFT might be able to knock Google off with a big ad campaign but it seems like its going to take a lot more than that to break old habits.