Microsoft Trumps Google, Yahoo! R&D Budgets

Rob writes to mention a Computer Business Review Online article on Microsoft's commitment to out-spend Google and Yahoo! on innovation in the coming year. From the article: "Microsoft Corp will spend over $1bn on R&D just in its MSN unit, for the fiscal year starting in July, chief executive Steve Ballmer told an audience of would-be advertising customers. The money, part of the surprise spending package that recently gave Microsoft's share price its biggest single-day drop in five years, comes as the company struggles to catch up to Yahoo! Inc and Google Inc in the search and online advertising market."

Re:They just don't get it

[Haeleth]

To-date, Microsoft's search results on Linux are way biased toward switching to them.

This is demonstrably false. To test it, I entered "linux" into search.msn.com and into google.com.

MSN's first page of results: linux.org, linux.com, kernel.org, Wikipedia's Linux article, Gentoo, IBM's Linux portal, Debian, Red Hat.
Google's first page of results: linux.org, Debian, linux.org.uk, kernel.org, Ubuntu, Mandrake, linux.com, Gentoo, Red Hat, Linux Format.

Pretty similar stuff. The fun is in the sponsored links.

MSN's sponsored link at the very top of the search results: Linux webhosting from webhosting.net.
Google's sponsored link at the very top of the search results: www.microsoft.com/getthefacts.