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Microsoft COO Warns Google Away From Corp Search 315

Posted by Zonk from the get-off-my-lawn dept.
Forbes is reporting on comments made by Microsoft COO Kevin Turner, concerning the corporate search business. At a company conference in Boston, Turner referred to the enterprise search business as 'our house', and warned Google to stay out. From the article: "Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate, because that is what they are intending to do ... Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business"
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Microsoft COO Warns Google Away From Corp Search More

Microsoft COO Warns Google Away From Corp Search

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  • Wow, NEWS! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mboverload ( 657893 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:41PM (#15729953) Journal
    Wow, a company doesn't want another company taking its business.

    Jesus Zonk, why did you approve this story?
    • Actually I think the story is "Microsoft wants to keep monopoly in corporate search and warns other businesses to stay away." Although I do agree that this is a non-story. After all, is anyone surprised that Microsoft wants to keep a monopoly?

      • Re:Wow, NEWS! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by NutscrapeSucks ( 446616 )
        Well, it would be a non-story if they were talking about Office Suites. But since Microsoft is dumping billions of dollars into web services to "kill Google", it's somewhat ironic.

    • Re:Wow, NEWS! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:45PM (#15729967) Homepage Journal
      What's newsworthy about this is not the competition between Microsoft and Google, but what Turner's comments reveal about Microsoft's attitude. The arrogance and lack of understanding of the competition that those few sentences encapsulate are breathtaking.
      • ..."food", isn't it?

        And if a whole enterprise is a piece of "food" for MS, where does that leave an individual?

      • Re:Wow, NEWS! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kfg ( 145172 ) * on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:03PM (#15730029)
        While I agree about Microsoft's arrogance in general, in this case it's just locker room talk:

        "We be bad. Yeah!"

        Pumpin' up the team. You'll hear its like at every stupid sales meeting at every stupid company in the world. Some of 'em even sing stupid fight songs. It's non news about a non event.

        KFG

        • fight songs... (Score:3, Funny)

          by jarg0n ( 882275 )
          Some of 'em even sing stupid fight songs.

          We're Not Gonna Take It!

          no, We Ain't Gonna Take It!

          We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

      • Re:Wow, NEWS! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by lantastik ( 877247 )
        It's funny how people like to sit behind their computers and criticize the business tactics of the most powerful corporation on the planet. I am not implying that I agree with their methods, but to assume a "lack of understanding" from a company that generates more than $40 billion (billion with a "b") in annual sales, and whose executives are among the richest men and women in the world...that shows a lack of understanding. Arrogant...sure, ignorant, FAR from it. You can afford some arrogance when you c

        • Re:Wow, NEWS! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by WhiteWolf666 ( 145211 )
          It's funny how people like to sit behind their computers and criticize the business tactics of the most powerful corporation on the planet. I am not implying that I agree with their methods, but to assume a "lack of understanding" from a company that generates more than $40 billion (billion with a "b") in annual sales, and whose executives are among the richest men and women in the world...that shows a lack of understanding. Arrogant...sure, ignorant, FAR from it. You can afford some arrogance when you can

      • I like a bit of MS bashing... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PinkyDead ( 862370 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @08:07AM (#15730410) Journal
        ... as much as the next person, but I think it's unfair from reading TFA to call arrogant on them.

        These quotes come from a company conference - and this guy is just giving a 'rallying the troops' type speech. He's not telling Google to keep out of Enterprise searches, he's telling his own staff that they are going to (try to) keep Google out of that market (good luck!). There's a big difference.

        You can be sure that at a Google company conference, Turner's counterpart is telling their staff that Enterprise searches are their right and they are going to take them from MS.
    • Where's the part where Google tells Microsoft to stay out of internet search?

  • that's great, but why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tehwebguy ( 860335 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:42PM (#15729956) Homepage
    everyone at microsoft has lost far too much hair over google..

    google products and servers really only even compete with a few microsoft ones, why don't they stop focusing on a competitor that they have essentially imagined and start focusing on making vista worth upgrading to
    • everyone at microsoft has lost far too much hair over google

      Um, I think The Ballmer was like that long before google. For him, I think Google has elevated his blood pressure to near coronary levels.

      • That would explain all the chair throwing. ;) Actually, I was shocked to find NO jokes about Balmer threatening violence in the thread so far.

        So weird that MS wants to get huffy and tell Google to stay out of their yard. Silly me thought that if you made a better product, you really didn't need to worry about what Google or anyone else does.

        Also, consider that MS added a new "feature" a couple weeks back to allow folders to be password protected/private in XP, which the enterprise sector freaked out on be

    • Re:that's great, but why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ClamIAm ( 926466 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:22PM (#15730104)
      google products and servers really only even compete with a few microsoft ones,

      There are a couple of angles I see this whole "battle" from. One is that monopolies don't last forever, and MS needs to move into new markets so that they can survive after Windows + Office falters. Google is a big competitor in the areas of information services.

      The other is that Microsoft has traditionally made lots of money by tying products together so that competitors cannot interoperate on their platform. By "platform", I mean Windows, Windows Server, Exchange, Office, and so on. Google is a threat here, as many of their services simply need a web browser, bypassing the MS platform completely.

      Disregarding the two points above, Google probably still scares the hell out of Microsoft. Google is a much more chaotic force than MS, releasing weird new tools that are a by-product of allowing your coders to work on "fun" projects. They are also a much more agile company: MS relies on having Windows pre-installed at retail, as well as long-term licensing contracts. This strategy takes a few years to get the new products entrenched (see the uptake of new MS operating systems over time for a good example). Google can throw a new app up on their site any time they want.

  • Classic late-stage empire behavior (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:42PM (#15729957) Homepage Journal
    Companies, like countries, tend to talk the toughest when they're in trouble. Seeing their domains as God-given rights instead of something they had to work for, making threats they can't back up, getting into fights with much smaller competitors that it seems like they should be able to win easily but somehow can't ... Yep.

    If I were a Microsoft stockholder or employee, I'd be very worried right now.
    • Very strong point that is you made, pal. And very to the point indeed.
    • That's actually true of commercial pop music artists, too. Look at the songs put out at the end of the New Kids, N'Sync, and Britney Spears' careers. Always something about how tough they are and how they'll be around for a long time....meaning one more week.
      • hat's actually true of commercial pop music artists, too. Look at the songs put out at the end of the New Kids, N'Sync, and Britney Spears' careers. Always something about how tough they are and how they'll be around for a long time....meaning one more week.
        Wasn't it the Backstreet Boys that threatened us with: "As long as there is music we'll keep coming back again"?
  • Too bad, its been around for a while too:

    http://www.google.com/enterprise/ [google.com]

  • Uh... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Skreems ( 598317 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:43PM (#15729962) Homepage
    Google's corporate search appliance has been around for how many years? And since when did Microsoft have a corporate search program anyway?

    • Re:Uh... (Score:5, Informative)

      by nxtw ( 866177 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:54PM (#15730000)
      I would imagine that any such system would be built upon the Indexing Service [wikipedia.org], which is a very useful tool. With the right configuration and software, it can implement a service very similar to Google Desktop or something similar to the Enterprise service.

      It works for me without any work other than telling it what to search: by turning it on on a Windows 2003 server and telling it to index a drive, a standard Windows search on that drive will use the index... even over the network. And that's all I personally need it for.

      • Re:Uh... (Score:3, Funny)

        by killjoe ( 766577 )
        Wow, indexing a drive. How cool. I wonder if anybody else has ever done that before.
      • Once I turned on the WIndows Indexing Service to try it out - indexing alone only gets you so far in search results, and does that even do file content? Google Desktop works much better for searching locally, and I assume the Google search appliance would do a similarily better job of things in an enterprise setting. I have to say I've yet to be at a company that uses either, though I suppose our corp intranet search feature which never, ever finds the documents I want might be using the Windows Indexing

      • Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pla ( 258480 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @08:10AM (#15730434) Journal
        I would imagine that any such system would be built upon the Indexing Service, which is a very useful tool.

        Did you mean to refer to the absolutely horrible, performance-crippling service that EVERY Windows user should disable as the first thing they do on a new install (actually on SP2 boxen they have it turned off by default, thank Zeus)?

        If so - Performance aside, that doesn't really count as "enterprise" level search. Desktop search amounts to nothing more than an index of local files; Enterprise search means coordinating that info across numerous machines and, frequently, several different physical sites connected by pipes of unknown (a priori) speed and reliability.
    • In my experience, "enterprise search" is dominated by, in order of importance:

      1) Ultraseek, Harvest and a bunch of other godawful engines that were barely considered adequate in 1995

      2) Google

      Maybe the Microsoft guy was making a joking reference to Under Armour ads...?

    • They don't. I got a real laugh from TFA, where this MS goof is ranting "our house", "our house"; then further down, IBM and Oracle are described as the other "competitors" they will be taking on. Sounds to me like they don't have Jack, and are frothing about this arena they "own" but somehow aren't competing in yet. Huh? Hello? Pass the Prozac, please!
    • no doubt and has MS lost its mind and forgotten about compainies that have been in the enterprise search business much longer and have enterprise search installations in many more Fortune 500s than MS could ever hope for:

      BEA
      Verity
      IBM
        to name a few.
    • "Google's corporate search appliance has been around for how many years? "

      Sure, you know that. I know that. Apparanly the bright sparks in MS-land still don't know.

      God those guys are fucking dumb.

  • google already dominates (Score:5, Insightful)

    by macadamia_harold ( 947445 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:47PM (#15729975) Homepage
    Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business

    Google dominates over MSN in consumer search. Does this guy honestly think they won't dominate Microsoft in Enterprise search? Why not back up his statement with a good reason why Google won't take MS to the woodshed on this one?

  • Microsoft have nothing to fear (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    after all, if they have the better product then why should they be worried about Google ?
  • ...you can't take what you already have. :)

  • business not personal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blinder ( 153117 ) * <[blinder.dave] [at] [gmail.com]> on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:48PM (#15729982) Homepage Journal
    here's what i don't get. do they (microsoft) teach their executives that the business is personal? i mean, sheesh... never before have a bunch of executives looked more like a bunch of cry-baby drama queens (and i'm no google fanboy).

    a note to microsoft executives: no, google is not trying to take food off *your* plate. they are competing with you. if you can't take it, then quit and go away. the cry-baby routine is quite boring and not terribly becoming for an executive of a major international corporation.

    • Re:business not personal (Score:2, Informative)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) *
      do they (microsoft) teach their executives that the business is personal?

      Yes. Ooooooooh, not overtly, but it is the defining aspect of Microsoft's corporate culture, directly tracable to the personality of Bill himself; a man who will get mad at you when you beat him at ping pong, because "you embaressed me in front of my friends."

      KFG

  • I smell fear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bnf ( 16861 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:48PM (#15729983) Homepage
    Hmm,

    Seems like the COO of an industry leading company should be more stalwart in his analysis of a market if indeed his company is the market leader. You're so much better off barely acknowledging the competition. You really shouldnt' even mention their name unless completely necessary. If he displays anything other than the facade of market leadership then it would seem to me that he's really not so sure of his market position.

    Good luck to him and his company who's shares will probably be dropping in value once again. ;)
  • Microsoft, cry me a river, build a bridge and get over it!
  • I guess there'll be Microsoft guys with chairs waiting to "totally kill" Google as their servers come into a corp search environment. Or maybe MSN Corporate, Chair Throwing Edition will clobber the server itself virtually by blocking anything from *.google.gom, silently of course. /joke

  • And in related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JonTurner ( 178845 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:49PM (#15729990) Journal
    And in related news, Microsoft announced today that CorporateSearch(tm) was being dropped from Vista.
  • Company I work for uses google search for everything for our enterprise.

  • somewhere (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:51PM (#15729996)
    deep with the Googleplex (or whatever it is called) deep evil laughs erupt ... but change to a Nelson haha when they remeber their motto (something to do with no evil).

  • Oh, pardon me, we didn't realize (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:53PM (#15729999)
    Enterprise Search is Microsoft's? We didn't realize that. We're sorry. We really wanted to sell Enterprise Search services. But hey, you got dibs on it, so nevermind. Didn't mean to crowd you. Please accept our apologies.

    See ya later. And don't be evil.

  • This may come across as flamebait, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:55PM (#15730006)
    Does Microsoft even have a shipping product that does this?

    I will freely admit that I may just not be informed in this area - but I didn't know Microsoft even did enterprise-level search stuff. I can't recall ever seeing articles in the trade press about it either.

  • Melodramatic Much? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by walnutmon ( 988223 )
    "Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate"

    Dear god! Hide your dinner plates, or google will take to stealing the food from your childrens figurtive mouths...

    This article missed his less publicized quote "Google is trying to rape our women, and eat our children, FREEEEEEEDOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!"
  • If you've used MS Search then you know how EASY it would be for Google to come in and get MS out. Microsoft's search engine is a pile.

  • Google doesn't stand a chance!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AngryDill ( 740460 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @08:58PM (#15730015)
    Wow. It's shocking to me how many people here are ready to write Microsoft off. People seem to think that the end is near; that Google and others will be some kind of threat to them.

    So many people are forgetting the lessons of history.

    Once I used to think that MS Word would never overtake WordPerfect; that WordPerfect had too big a lead
    Once I used to think that IE would never overtake Netscape; that Netscape had too much mindshare
    Once I used to think that WinCE would never overtake Palm; that Palm was the perennial favorite
    I've since wisened up, and will never underestimate Microsoft again.

    The historical scoreboard of Microsoft versus competitors, for those to young to remember:
    • MS-DOS beat CP/M-80, DR-DOS
    • Windows beat Mac OS, GEM, OS/2, Desqview, etc.
    • Word beat WordPerfect, Wordstar, Wordpro
    • Excel beat 123, Quattro
    • Access beat dBase, Paradox, Approach
    • Outlook beat Eudora, ACT
    • PowerPoint beat Harvard Graphics
    • Encarta beat Compton's
    • Exchange beat Notes
    • Frontpage beat Composer
    • Visual Basic beat Power Basic, Turbo Basic
    • Visual C beat Borland C, Lightspeed C, etc.
    • MS-Publisher beat Ventura
    • Internet Explorer beat Netscape, Opera, Mozilla
    • Visio has no real competition
    • Win-CE beat Palm
    • WMP beat RealPlayer
    • Project leads its market
    • Halo 1,2 is king of the FPS games
    • Visual Studio leads all competitors by far

    Looking at the current market share battles:

    • MSN is overtaking AOL
    • .NET is beating Java
    • Money leads Quicken
    • MSN Messenger is beating ICQ, AIM, Y!Messenger
    • X-Boxen are outselling Sony Playstatia
    • IIS is gaining on Apache
    • SQL Server is catching up to Oracle
    • MSN Seach is gaining market share against Google and Yahoo
    • Windows growth is outpacing Unix, Linux

    People will often joke about MS "Bob" - myself included. But Bob is one of very few actual Microsoft market failures. Virtually every other MS product either already dominates its field, or is projected to do so.

    I'm not a Microsoft shill; far from it. I'm proud to count myself among those with the deepest disdain for the company. Currently, I am an enthusiastic Linux, KDE, OpenOffice.org, and Firefox afficianado. Before that, it was always "anything but Microsoft." As much as I'd like this to be the beginning of the end for MS, I cannot kid myself.

    Look at the facts:

    1. Microsoft is still the richest, most popular, and most powerful IT company in the world
    2. It still has the rare advantage of being able to buy out or undersell almost any competitor (hell, it could buy most governments!)
    3. It has proven time and time again that it can violate business laws, effectively with impunity
    4. It makes more money by breaking the rules (and paying the invariably-modest penalty) that it would had it actually followed them
    5. It is still being run by the richest man in the known universe; who will continue on as Chairman
    6. Microsoft has powerful stallwart allies: Dell, Intel, the BSA, the Bush administration's Justice Department, etc.
    7. It remains the favorite of the press (Ziff-Davis, CMP, et. al.) and of many CIOs
    8. Most companies worldwide have picked Microsoft as their primary (in many cases only) software publisher
    9. MS is not above using very nasty FUD to sell its products, which the pointy-haired crowd spouts as gospel
    10. It has millions of customers locked in on its proprietary file formats and protocols
    11. MS has plenty of marketing help. Virtually all computer manufacturers (yes, even IBM) recommend Microsoft operating systems in all their advertising materials (I always look)
    12. Microsoft has weapons it hasn't even started to use against competitors: i.
    • This is Slashdot. Inside the Slashdot bubble, nothing that Microsoft has ever done has been worth anything, and nothing that they ever do will be worth looking at. Bill Gates is evil. Linux and/or OS X have a huge, ever-growing percentage of the market share and will eventually take over the world. Neither has ever had a security problem that wasn't immediately and completely fixed. Firefox will destroy Internet Explorer. Vista and IE7 will be irrelevant. FreeBSD is dead. And whoever modded your pos

    • Re:Google doesn't stand a chance!!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by shawb ( 16347 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:27PM (#15730124)
      There's a Bill Murray movie [imdb.com] that you're forgetting.

      Mods: this post is not offtopic, check the title of the film. That, and Bill Murray is NEVER offtopic. NEVER!

    • Re:Google doesn't stand a chance!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:33PM (#15730136)
      IIS is gaining on Apache / SQL Server is catching up to Oracle / Windows growth is outpacing Unix, Linux

      don't make me fucking laugh.

      of all your list the only examples which are even remotely true, is in cases where MS has been able to leverage it's OS monopoly to stiffle competition.
      the only other way it's ever able to gain a foothold is to LOSE MONEY on a product eg. xbox. and they can't keep going into market losing money like that, even MS's bank account has it's limits.

    • Re:Google doesn't stand a chance!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:45PM (#15730165)
      You may very well be right. In fact, I even hope you are because I recently started working at Microsoft.

      However, there is one thing that is different in this case. It was only recently that Microsoft lost its place as the most desirable software company to work for. Maybe it's still second best, and definitely it's still close to the top, but now, some other company is now the holy grail for the ambitious recent computer science graduate. I applied for Google and wasn't even given a phone interview.

      Were any of the failed Microsoft competitors on your list anywhere close to being equal (or greater than) Microsoft on the smart kid's job wishlist? Were any of the other companies capable of stealing away the best and the brightest from Microsoft?

      Someone could argue that just having the best/smartest employees won't ensure success, but I don't think there has ever been a time in Microsoft's history where they have had to compete with a company higher than them on the hiring pecking order.

      In my opinion, that's the big difference between Microsoft's past competitors and Google.

      Microsoft isn't going down any time soon (ever?), but this new challenge may be its hardest yet. Google's got search down really well, and its employees are at least as talented, if not more.

    • Re:Google doesn't stand a chance!!! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hmm, you started out with a fairly interesting post, but the facts are incorrect in the second half. Forinstance IIS/Apache usage rates have been historically seen fairly much the same, as of now MS has not been able to get IIS out of this standard range. Also it is google that was growing at the loss of yahoo and msn, or atleast one of the two. I don't about .net, but it is becoming less elevant due to OSS implementations of it making it possible to run more and more aspects of it on other OSs. Xboxes don'
    • I love the smell of a pre-prepared astroturf Slashdot post in the morning!
    • No one could beat IBM.
    • Though some of the stuff you said is simply wrong, it's mostly correct. The only problem I see is that while history is a great learning lesson you have to realise that the world isn't static, and not only can entities change but the situations around them can change. If this weren't the case then the great empires of the past would still be around.

      Looking at recent history, Microsoft hasn't had all that much luck when facing Google. Google's throttled them in search, even when they had MSN search as

    • Re:Google doesn't stand a chance!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @10:09PM (#15730224)
      Win-CE beat Palm

      Say what?

      Microsoft doesn't even have second place in that market. Find me a guy with a real management job that doesn't have either a Blackberry or a Treo 650 as his/her palmtop computing platform, and I'll show you a Microsoft employee, or review site owner.
    • So many people are forgetting the lessons of history - look at the facts

      More like forgetting history itself and ignoring the true facts, since MS 'purchased' market control/share when it bought most of the so called 'leaders' you list and made more than its' share of mistakes...need examples? VISIO for one. CRM for another...

      The point(?) you try to make is based on selective filtering simply to skew towards a positive spin for MS - the failure of Xbox in Japan, the total lack of any type of corportate

  • And in other news.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dracken ( 453199 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:03PM (#15730028) Homepage
    ...Google founder Larry Page in a press conference said "Google is getting out of corporate search business, Microsoft COO warned us away. We are now warning Microsoft away from the OS business"

    Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer upon hearing this threw a chair across his office and said "Damn ! okay, Lets get out of the OS business, Google warned us away. Send a warning out to Intel to get out of the Chip making business"

    Paul Otellini, pulling Intel out of its core Processor business said "Intel is looking for other high-tech sectors to enter...After issuing appropriate warning to the current market leaders of course"

    What a lame story !

  • MS needs to deliver a product before talking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:04PM (#15730031) Homepage
    I normally try to avoid the Slashdot groupthink ("Apple good! M$ bad! blah blah blah") but this is one instance where ridicule is warranted.

    Microsoft has NEVER owned the enterprise search space. They don't have a single corporate appliance to help search large volumes. Their search in Exchange is downright disgraceful. Personally, I won't touch their indexing service (about a month after it came out in Windows 2000, they found security holes with it. Thanks but no thanks).

    If they're talking about local search, things are just as bad. Their puppy mascot takes forever to find files, and if a file is removed or deleted from the search window, explorer.exe gets freaked out and sometimes puts up an error message.

    It says volumes that 3rd-party companies have an easier time finding files on Microsoft volumes than MS's own tools. I personally use Google desktop. While it can take forever to load, it finds files and emails lightning quick. If you download it, be sure to try searching in email (both using Outlook's search and Google's toolbar) -- you'll be amazed at the difference.

    MS has to produce something, anything, that says their serious about search. Windows Vista is their one shot, and it's looking pretty bad. It does something from a UI standpoint I find kind of ludicrous: you open the Start Menu, type a few letters to find a program and, if it can't find it, it looks for files and then searches the web through MSN. Huh? MS put it in the Programs menu -- it should search for programs. For reference, if you use the Spotlight search feature on Mac within System Preferences, it searches just that -- System Preferences. It doesn't look for files or search the web.
  • ...Well, "keep on worrying about stuff that does not matter anymore..." I should say. I can see one of those boxes featured here http://www.google.com/enterprise/ [google.com] powering online office apps like Writely and the Google Spread sheet from an interna network usually called an intranet. Then at that moment you as Microsoft will see how Google really "eats" your lunch. In the meantime keep on whining.

  • A monologue (Score:2, Funny)

    by peterfa ( 941523 )
    Ok, this is really bad. "Google, that terrorist organization, threatens the American way of life because they threaten the very fabric of our economy, taking away the food from our sickly childrens' mouths." -- a really poor misquote. Please don't mod me down troll or flamebait. **trembles**

  • At last check, (Score:3, Informative)

    by Hawthorne01 ( 575586 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:17PM (#15730092)
    Microsoft wasn't a player in corporate search [searchenginewatch.com]. Autonomy, IBM and (surprise!) Google were the players in that market.

    And in other news, I'm warning Ferrari not to take away the Aston Martin that's in my driveway. It's there. Really. Ok, so no one but me can see it, but I'm warning you, Ferrari, BACK OFF!!!

  • Maybe I'm ignorant, but could somebody please define what "enterprise search" is? It seems not to have to do with databases, and I'm hard put to believe it is just "web search done for business purposes". Exactly what sort of market and technology is this about?

  • Use the full quote, wouldya? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kamineko ( 851857 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:30PM (#15730132)
    "Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate, because that is what they are intending to do ... Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business"


    The rest of that quote reads:


    "... unless, of course, their product is better than ours. In which case, they will attract new customers, together with customers from our existing customer base. Which... I guess you could call taking our business."


    Honest, guv!

  • Echos from the past (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bsandersen ( 835481 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:36PM (#15730144) Homepage
    And I'm sure the *NIX and VMS marketplace remembers saying that Microsoft can have the desktop but _WE_ own the server room.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:39PM (#15730157)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Sharepoint lockout! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rwa2 ( 4391 ) * on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:40PM (#15730158) Homepage Journal
    At the big company I work for, Google search powers the intranet seach engine. On the other hand, almost all of the new websites being set up are done in Sharepoint. Due to export laws, just about everything has to be password protected on a per-user basis, to be sure that no unreviewed technical information (=pretty much everything) gets inadvertantly passed on to foreign national employees (everyone with an H1B visa or even US citizen workers who work for subsidiaries based in foreign countries).

    So, pretty much, our internal Google search is useless for finding any useful information, because all of the most active stuff is closed away in Sharepoint. So the google search appliance is at a disadvantage until it can support user / group ACLs and stuff.

    Google could handily beat MS at enterprise search once they beat them at groupware... which shouldn't be too hard, save for MS's tight sharepoint integration with Exchange/Outlook. Fortunately, Google appears to be advancing on all these fronts, so they have their work cut out for them. But in the mean time, it looks like the MS exec has a point.

  • SWISH-E (Score:3)

    by eluusive ( 642298 ) on Sunday July 16, 2006 @09:40PM (#15730159)
    Sorry Microsoft, you must have missed the memo. SWISH-E stole your business years ago.
  • If Microsoft has a corporate search product, I've never heard of it until now. Their past attempts at desktop search haven't exactly been spectacular either.
  • I have a hard time believing that someone at Microsoft said that. It really doesn't make any sense.

    And do they even have a corporate search product? I know google does, but I've never heard of a corporate search Microsoft product.

  • ...the chair would have been enough of a warning. I guess they just didn't get the message.
  • Corporate search technology isn't good enough. And it's not going to get good enough until it's informed by much better ontologies/taxonomies. What's more, when the required ontology/taxonomy engines and business processes finally exist, they won't just be used for search; they'll also be used for text mining, knowledge extraction, speech recognition, and so on. So far as I can tell, none of the big generalists or small linguistics specialist companies understand this point, or else the ones that do are
  • Well, someone had to say it.

  • Smart move from MS (Score:2, Interesting)

    by xbrownx ( 459399 )
    Don't quotes like this just help to inspire and motivate your competitors?
  • We've already seen that it is possible, in the 21st century USA, to maintain a near-monopoly; to exploit that near-monopoly by methods that are, at best, borderline legal; to be found guilty of illegal behavior; and to escape scot-free (coincidentally right after a change of administration). After all that, is it really wise to stand up tall and brag loudly about your monopoly?

    More than anything, I find these remarks offensive to Microsoft's customers. Apparently they somehow belong by right to Microsoft -

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