Memo Outlines Microsoft's Plans 118
conq wrote to mention a BusinessWeek article that covers some of Microsoft's upcoming web plans. From the article: "Live.com, Microsoft's customizable search-oriented portal, has more than 3 million users and the second-highest Net Promoter score -- a metric showing how many users would recommend the site to others -- of all MSN.com properties, writes Cole. That's good news, since the Live.com portal is the entry point for the first release of its Windows Live Search, the site through which Microsoft hopes to make the big bucks through paid search. Microsoft on Mar. 8 unveiled a slew of features aimed at letting users personalize the way they search the Web."
Live.com (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how much MS shelled out for that domain name?
Re:Live.com (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Live.com (Score:2)
That's plain weird. How the hell does that resolve? I'm using FF on XP and sure enough I was forwarded to http://www.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com]. I don't have a *nix box handy, so I can't tell if it's my OS doing it or if that's really a resolvable address. I tried a couple WhoIs searches, but then again the http is filtered out of most forms. Others just say it's invalid. Ping and other tools say it's invalid. WTF?
Re:Live.com (Score:1)
dubya
tee
eff
Re:Live.com (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.google.com/search?q=http&start=0&ie=ut
first link is to MS, and firefox does a feeling lucky search for this
Re:Live.com (Score:2)
Re:Live.com (Score:1)
it's FIREFOX doing it.
It's true. I just entered that URL into Konqueror, running on Linux - as expected, it complained that the hostname couldn't be resolved and nothing else happened.
I than entered the same URL into Firefox, running on the same (Linux-) machine. I ended up at microsoft.com.
WTF?
Re:Live.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Live.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Live.com (Score:5, Informative)
It used to belong to Live Networks Inc (check Wayback [archive.org]). They are a vendor of streaming media tools. They had the domain since at least 1998.
Re:Live.com (Score:2)
Poorly disguised shill. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poorly disguised shill. (Score:3, Interesting)
LOL. And this is different how from what's published by the real deal MS Press [microsoft.com]? It's never ceased to amaze me how, at their most technical, most all publications read like advertising copy. As to the article, Bill describe his place in the era of live software with
Socially challenged. (Score:2)
Re:Poorly disguised shill. (Score:2, Funny)
Fixed so I can read it. (Score:2)
May I point out an exception to that "rule"? The SCO Group would love to send a terminator back to remove Pamela Jones before she started groklaw.net
Top Ten signs your court cases are going badly:
10 you have a blog posting every (public) detail of the case
09 This includes all of your FTC filings
08 You have hacked off two judges
07 and they are talking with each other.
06 The guy that cowrote the book on the language says you have no case.
05 The guy you paid says you hav
A press release is a press release (Score:5, Insightful)
David Cole, a Microsoft senior vice-president, outlined progress and key objectives for Windows Live in a memo obtained by BusinessWeek Online.
"Memo"? Sounds like some hucksters press release to me. I don't know who Businessweek thinks its is kidding by calling these pronouncements from Redmond anything other than a PR statement.
"And I can assure you the onslaught of upcoming Windows Live services will place us in a strong competitive position and will reestablish our leadership in the industry."
Businessweek and Slashdot pretend that's "news" because...
Anyone want to take a guess?
Re:A press release is a press release (Score:3, Insightful)
when the engine picks up speed you don't want to be caught napping on the track.
dead.com (Score:5, Informative)
Good to see that things worked just as one would expect from MS. Naturally I would unhesitatingly recommend live.com - my small contribution to Micosoft's prodigious "Net Promoter" score. When folks get back to me saying live.com doesn't work, I'll be suggesting they another website and, preferably, try Mac OS or Ubuntu as well.
Re:dead.com (Score:3)
a metric showing how many users would recommend the site to others -- of all MSN.com properties
Everybody that uses MSN would recommend to use live.com or everybody that WORKS at MSN would recommend live.com?
Re:dead.com (Score:1, Informative)
On a related note, the Live Search did work for me (Firefox1.5 on winXP), but Microsoft for some reason assumed my browser doesn't have any scrollbars, and so gave me their own javascript-enabled one, which of course doesn't work with my scrollwheel. Thanks, thanks a lot.
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:1)
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand that you may not think javascript is completely necessary, but you're asking for access to interactive applications while at the same time demanding that you not be forced to use an up-to-date application runner. If a site is just about giving you information, then great, don't make javascript a requirement. But stuff like live.com with the gadgets and whatnot is not just about displaying text; it's meant to be
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:2)
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:2)
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:2)
In many companies I've dealt with internally javascript is disabled as a part of the corporate security policy. A site that will not work without it (possibly slightly degrared) is just broken. You don't *need* flashy animations and drop down menus. Really.
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:2)
And I agree, usually animations and dropdowns are not totally necessary, but it also depends on what you're writing. If it's more of an applic
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:2)
Basically, designing to degrade gracefully is what you need
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:2)
Re:dead.com poor support (Score:2)
Well, yes. They'll get it working first, and worry about the no-script audience later, if at all.
No Mac compatiblity either (Score:2)
Re:No Mac compatiblity either (Score:2)
Then again, what site isn't?
Re:dead.com (Score:2)
1.5.0.1 (linux).
First impression, yes, it is slow. It takes about as long as Gmail to
load the interface. I notice these things because I'm on a slow
connection.
Second impression: well I did'nt really get that far, because suddenly
Firefox crashed. From my experience, this doesn't happen very
often. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen the quality agent doodad.
Is this just a coincidence?
Re:dead.com (Score:1)
Paid search? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Paid search? (Score:1)
The user interface is completely opaque. Just what I want from a web search site and portal - something that is as unintuitive as many Microsoft programs. I'm not going to sit down and write a detailed critique of all the things I found counter-intuitive in my 5 minute exploration.
It sort of ran on Firefox 1.5.0.1 on Windows/2000 Professioinal. I'm doing some interoperability tes
haha. (Score:3, Insightful)
Live.com might fail, but that statement might turn out to be truer than MSoft will ever care to admit.
objectively thinking ofcourse, there's almost zero chance of live.com not being atleast moderately successful, even with all the news of Google acquiring Writey etc etc
Re:haha. (Score:1)
All they'd need is a single innovative item to make that come true, not only for MSN, but for all of Microsoft, for it's complete history. Microsoft Innovation is an oxymoron.
Re:haha. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:haha. (Score:2)
No company currently selling advertising space in a major way can ignore Internet search, with out suffering the consequences of crippling it's future as a major Internet player.
Of course every other player benefits with open
Re:haha. (Score:3, Interesting)
Even as an MS employee I've always considered the MSN group to be pretty lame, and produce lame products. But I gotta tell you, they have a fire in them right now that is palpable. They suddenly have an influx of real talent, tons of research resources, and a determination to outshine Google. Some of the stuff they have on the pipeline is geniunely interesting. Anyway, take that for what it's worth. They may still come out with lame products and fail spectacularly. But MSN '05-'06 is definitely not classic
Re:haha. (Score:1)
Deja-Vu (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Deja-Vu (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Deja-Vu (Score:1)
Oh, and http://www.google.com/ig [google.com] works in Opera
--
onedotzero
thedigitalfeed.co.uk [thedigitalfeed.co.uk]
Re:Deja-Vu (Score:2)
Funny you should mention it... (Score:2)
Competition is good (Score:4, Insightful)
e.g. [bmw autohaus finden] in Google.de use to pull up BMWs dealership finder before Google penalized them, BMW were forced to remove the doorway keywords, now it brings up nothing useful. Way to go Google.
Even if its competition from Microsoft, it will be a good thing, as long as MS doesn't try it usual anti-trust crap.
Re:Competition is good (Score:1)
Re:Competition is good (Score:1)
I think you're hoping for too much.
Re:Competition is good (Score:2)
Still, this is a problem of Google, they cannot filter out the content-less harvesting sites efficiently yet, especially in Germany.
BTW, googling for "BMW" will lead you to the various offical BMW sites of which you'd guessed the correct url beforehand anyway ;)
I think you missed the point (Score:2)
I think you missed the point, I Googled [bmw autohaus finden] and got BMW's Dealership finder. This was in the gap, just after the penalty had been lifted and just before the BMW site was recrawled. I did the same for many of the keyphrases BMW should be top for that were on that page of keywords Matt showed on his blog.
That BMW site is probably the only good result for that query! After the recrawl BMW disappeared, that penalty directly caused the bad result
Re:I think you missed the point (Score:2)
Furthermore I just tried and searched on google.de to the phrase "autohaus finden" in combination with all german car brands and in none of these cases I found a link to the main car manufacturer involved, be it at the results or at the advertizements. I did find individual dealerwebsites, though, but only of the dealers that have the word 'A
Re:I think you missed the point (Score:2)
True, missed that link sorry, but I don't see how it mitigates the poor Google result.
"Furthermore I just tried and searched on google.de to the phrase "autohaus finden" in combination with all german car brands and in none of these cases I found a link to the main car manufacturer involved,"
Again, I don't see how that mitigates the problem, Google, MSN and Yahoo all use to work for that search (and many many others) befo
Re:I think you missed the point (Score:2)
But Google removing individual SEOs as in the case of BMW will not solve the problem, as other ones will appear continuously. Especially your last point made me realize that you cannot prevent SEO by regulation, but that you need an algorithm that will (a) give you automatically the most intelligent result (b) will be immune for obviously inva
Re:PR Tactic (Score:2)
They're just trying to boost the number to up the advertising revenue.
Like everything Microsoft does - gold plated dog crap.
Re:PR Tactic (Score:1)
Re:PR Tactic (Score:2)
Re:PR Tactic (Score:2)
Simple is very difficult to do well. People who turn out complicated programs do so because they can't produce simple programs.
By the way, your professors are professors in large part because they can't
Re:PR Tactic (Score:2)
Simple is difficult to do well, yes, but complicated programs aren't always complicated because the peopl
"And I can assure you the onslaught of upcoming.." (Score:2)
I think I'm not alone when my reaction to such crap usually is something like take your assurances to some pr-publishing journals for the masses, we're only interested in professional quality products, and unless Live search site will prove to be ["will" = i.e. I still don't see it as such] a worthy competitor with providing some megnitudes more quality and/or service, I'm not interested.
Huh??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has anyone actually made it work under Firefox on Linux?
Re:Huh??? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Huh??? (Score:1)
Re:Huh??? (Score:1, Interesting)
Try using live.com with IE and extra large fonts enabled. I tried it on IE just to see how bad it was (I always use Firefox). Any, the result is an un-godly mess. It's so bad it's actually funny and just goes to show how much testing MS put in with their own browser, let alone anyone elses.
Actually, as I recall, all web sites in IE with extra large fonts are an un-godly mess.
an_unknown_soldier
Re:Huh??? (Score:1)
Re:Huh??? (Score:2)
Business as Usual (Score:5, Insightful)
paid search? (Score:3, Funny)
This is a joke right?
Good ole MSOFT (Score:4, Insightful)
Live.com (as it appears to me) is just an attempt at copying everything that is popular on the web. A Favorites Section ala del.icio.us (yahoo), Personalized Simple Desktop that the user can Customize (this has been around, but google made it simple) Mail / IM integration (Google/Yahoo feature)
I don't see anything as new except for the "Security Center" which obviously will be some antispyware/malware/virus thing, however I don't necessarily consider MS the authorities on security but more like the person who left the window unlocked in the first place.
The hook for Microsoft is obviously vista. This portal thing is going to communicate directly with every user (Similar to Google Desktop). Vista will also do everything to guide the user into using that site as an extension of the O.S. The new IE will make sure of that. Makes sense that Microsoft Office Online will probably be integrated somehow into this system as well.
I do think that this is a dramatic improvement for MS, and they are catching up quickly; but they don't want to take the lead. They like exactly where they are.
FTFA: One such service is a click-per-call capability that will let users connect to businesses via Web-based calls by clicking on MSN search links. Sources tell BusinessWeek Online that the capability will be unveiled the week of Mar. 13.
Another example of following google's lead.
This really a great example of a Drafting [wikipedia.org] Marketing Strategy. It's been no secret that MS lets others innovate, and quietly absorbs all of their breakthroughs and then corners the market with their massive resources. Firefox being another in a long list of victims from this strategy.
Re:Good ole MSOFT (Score:1)
Re:Good ole MSOFT (Score:2)
Re:Good ole MSOFT (Score:1)
They left out the locks in doors too so that all these delivery people can now deliver your food right into your refrigerator, hang your new suit in your closet and so on. The window is open should your doors become blocked for some reason. Let's say some owner who does not realize how valuable these lockless doors are, they will still be able to deliver their valuable service.
Next month they are going to start checking if you are running out of
Office Apps (Score:1)
Re:Office Apps (Score:2)
Yeah but it will have to use normal ms office code in activex controls so it will be a disaster. If they used different technology people would just laugh at them for being wrong all this time.
search or be searched (Score:1)
followed by a slew of new features aimed at letting the NSA snoop on how you search the web.
Re:How Microsoft does everything (Score:2, Funny)
1. Steal - ehm, I mean Embrace - someone elses idea, sculpt a clone in dog crap.
Slashdot Survey (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you read a blog, beyond Microsoft fanboys saying how great live.com?
I get recommended all sorts of sites by word-of-mouth from friends, and no-one has even mentioned live.com.
Re:Slashdot Survey (Score:2)
the clue is in the techno marketing babel (Score:4, Funny)
Re:the clue is in the techno marketing babel (Score:2)
Re:the clue is in the techno marketing babel (Score:1)
Possible where MS got the idea to make boolean tristate, as in TRUE, FALSE or DEFAULT
Live.com (Score:2, Funny)
Are these 3 million users all high? Maybe I'm on some phenomenally poorly connected part of the internet, but I haven't even gotten live.com to complete a search successfully. Aside from that, most of the widgets on the main page don't load, and the one image search that worked on
Re:Live.com (Score:1)
1) make page useless on all browsers apart from IE
2) Spend millions advertising said site
3) Wait while millions of users try to use it
4) Spend $0 broadcasting the kit rate
5) Wait as users give up on Firefox, Opera, Safari etc and turn back to IE
6) Profit from Browser Lock-in
The cynic in me says its just part of the marketing push towards world domination of everything.
The rest of me say "They can't be that stupid can they?"
Time will tell which is correct.
Re:Live.com (Score:2)
Net promoter score (Score:4, Informative)
I'd never heard of a "Net promoter score", so I asked Google, and it pointed me to another Businessweek article [businessweek.com].
Re:Net promoter score (Score:2)
While I haven't read his new book yet (it was released on the 2nd), he's not your typical brain-dead consultant. He wrote an excellent book, The Loyalty Effect [amazon.com],
One question... (Score:2)
Does anyone else consider this less a measure of live.com's success and more a measure of how unpopular all the other "MSN.com properties" are?
Live Mail to grow from 750K to 20M in 3 months? (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows Live Mail, the new version of Microsoft's flagship Hotmail e-mail, is hosting 750,000 users, and the company hopes it will host 20 million by June, according to the memo.
Isn't it reasonable to assume that all this means is that all the Hotmail users will be automatically converted over to Live Mail in June? Doesn't anyone at BusinessWeek have the smarts, or the chutzpah, to ask whether this is even plausible?
Are there any reliable estimates of the number of free mail users out there? 20 mill
Re:Live Mail to grow from 750K to 20M in 3 months? (Score:1)
Pawn (Score:1)
I can see the thinking here. Tell all the web citizens of this cool new site (that is no more than a copy of existing services)and make loud comments on how everyone will use it. Set it up as the default page of the next release of Windows$ and say hey look at all the people using it.
Re:BusinessWeak Microsoft propoganda (Score:1)
This is just big business creating a fear of Google because it promotes free products and services as well as supporting a business model for relevant products. When I come here to