MSN – Followers like sheep…Barrr?

Lets see some innovation for once

[RichTC]

Hi all,

In my usual spam junk email messages I get every day, before one message got nuked I noticed it said view “Windows live earth” product, blah, blah, blah

On since looking at the product msn’s “live earth” offering, I find that its all very nice and dandy but its almost exactly the same as the google earth product (minus the wow factor as its already been done and we have all seen it)

So I got to thinking that MSN have now almost zero innovation, they cant come up with anything new – All they want to do is become google by the looks of it?.

How much cash have msn wasted on this product? They have a search engine that’s a bag of nails yet do nothing to improve it, a B2 directory that’s a half product and a number other offerings like googles, only half baked. Jack of all trades comes to mind?

Now im not saying they should re-invent the wheel here, but come on, wouldn’t it be a good idea to get one product like say “Live Search” right before they dabble in other areas?.

When msn said they were dumping Yahoo in favour of building their own search engine I thought great we need competition in this sector, we need something better than google. Yet some years on, msn have failed miserably at search and look like they have given up on it only to move onto copying other google products. Following like sheep rather than looking at innovative ways to improve search.

Perhaps msn need to stick to windows products that they are good at and leave search and everything else well alone…. MSN are currently following others in the market rather than leading and that wasnt what got Bill Gates to where he is now.

Time for a wake up call i think!

[Reno]

...wouldn’t it be a good idea to get one product like say “Live Search” right before they dabble in other areas?

I must confess to being more than a little surprised at how long it is taking MS to become a major contender in the search field. Back in the mid-90's when they announced that they would be taking on Netscape, the response was fast and success close to total (IE is almost always 95+% of my search traffic). Maybe launching Vista tied things up -- don't know, but at this pace Google and Yahoo have little to worry about.

......................

[BillyS]

MSN has to be completely frustrated with Live right now - it's useless as a search engine. In fact, it's so bad that Vista users will be forced to manually switch from Live.com and that's a big break for Google and Yahoo.

[thecityofgold2005]

The problem is zero innovation from Microsoft or Yahoo. They've both tried like sheep like to copy Google where Google has a huge lead in both technology and user's perception of the product.

The next big search engine will be innovative and use some new idea in ranking. The mess that Google is in regarding PR and backlinks is creating an opportunity for something new. Will Microsoft or Yahoo grasp it?

Clearly not.

Yahoo is run by a movie studio boss who knows nothing about search and Microsoft has never been innovative, just superb at ripping off the idea of others.

I await wikiasearch with interest.

[Marcia]

MSN/Live Search just need to recognize the core strength that Microsoft has brought to the economic landscape, latch onto that imagery, and capitalize on their core strengths.

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the Microsoft *suits* don't even realize what that particular strength is, and which sector of the overall population they've had a tremendous positive impact on over the years.

Maybe it takes a woman to know. :P