steveb - 5:38 pm on May 14, 2006 (gmt 0)

"but it's safe to say that MSFT has had its share of success."

My gardener is a great gardener. When he decided to do brain surgery on the side, the initial results weren't good. He now says he'll be a great brain surgeon in five years.

Microsoft's stupidity when it comes to search is staggering. First they ignored the lucrative market altogether. The they launched an abomination of an engine. Then they did an ad campaign that did nothing but cause them to lose market share because people tried their engine and discovered how pathetic it was. Simultanteously they put policies in place aimed at making more money if they had a working search engine, but they did nothing to make one. Now they promise vaporware in five years.

In terms of lost revenue, it would be hard, seriously, to find a series of more stupidly self-destructive actions over the past several years than Microsoft's approach to search.