Official: Microsoft 'bribes' companies to use Live Search

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 18 March 2007 21:01

Your IT - Entertainment

Microsoft also has plans to share profits from the Live Search project with humanitarian organizations, removing some of the emphasis on the ‘bribing’ of companies to helping humanitarians get some no-doubt badly needed extra funding.

Former Microsoft employee and blogger Robert Scoble who served as the online face of Microsoft during his three years at the company is not impressed with Microsoft’s moves in deciding to offer companies money to use search. 

His arguments are quite valid and boil down to Microsoft really needing to create better products, rather than needing to pay companies to get more traction for Windows Live. After all, Scoble isn’t the first to observe that Google doesn’t need to pay anyone to use its search services – people use them voluntarily because of the quality of the results.

Which brings us to the quality of results from Live Search. It has to be said that Microsoft has steadily gotten better and better with their search results, but it also has to be said that Google still delivers better quality results from the first attempt, and in a world where quality of information and time means everything, using Google first is the smart move if you value your time.

Still, Microsoft say that they are doing this to gather information that helps them improve the quality of Live Search’s results, so if that actually happens, that will be a good thing, at least good for anyone that chooses (or is ‘encouraged’) to use the Live Search system.

So, the message to Microsoft is: work harder and faster at improving the quality of your search products, and people will voluntarily use them. If you must pay companies to improve your market share and help build a better system, so be it: with money, you can do just about anything, and if you truly want to become number 1 in search, this is one way to accelerate the journey and the quality.

After all, Microsoft knows that Google threatens them on many fronts, and despite Steve Ballmer’s assertions that Google really only has one product, search, with everything else just ‘cute’, the reality is that Google is the biggest, strongest and wealthiest competitor they’ve ever faced.

Pulling out all the stops, turning the company on a dime and using every legal tactic available, including *paying* people to use your product, is all fair in love and war, and may just work in starting to turn the search stats around – but it’ll still be a long time before we’ll see some truly large market share gains for Live Search, unless Live’s results start matching or even beating Google very quickly. Good luck, Microsoft, you’re going to need it!