OK, OK, I’m an arrogant a##h@@e. But, everytime I do a Google vs. Live search Google wins.

Here’s another one. I remember a few days ago someone on Twitter announced a Twitter search engine. I didn’t remember the URL, so I went to Google. Typed “Twitter search.”

Google came right back with the correct answer. And came back with the best blogs on the topic.

But, some people at Microsoft are saying that I’m being unfair to Microsoft. I really still do love Microsoft (and I still own stock in Microsoft, I don’t own stock in Google or Yahoo). So, I want them to do well.

But, I go over to Live.com and do the same search. The site I’m looking for is nowhere to be found. Even better, the first result brings back Google!

So, sorry, when I say Microsoft’s Internet execution sucks, this is what I’m talking about.

I wish Microsoft were better. I really do.

Oh, and Twitter Search is here.

UPDATE: Look at the advertising Microsoft is bringing back too. Microsoft is trying to raise its advertising revenues by showing non-relevant ads. That’ll hurt Microsoft long term cause anyone on Live will know the ads really have nothing to do with the search being done. Google’s approach will lead to more consistent advertising users. Advertising IS part of the search. Microsoft treats searchers as something to take advantage of, while Google puts far more relevant ads in front of a searcher, or none at all.

Julio Vasconcellos is one of those smart kids who are at Stanford now trying to learn how the world works and how to build interesting things/companies/experiences. Today he posted an interview with Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, great interview. He was asked about Google’s huge market share and whether Eric expects to get into DOJ trouble because of that, Intel’s founder asked him about Google’s chaotic structure, he talked about Ray Ozzie’s point that Microsoft’s data center building being a competitive advantage. I learned a lot from this interview, I’m sure Google’s competitors will tear this one apart.

I’m reading Hillel Cooperman. He left Microsoft (ran the Max team) to run a startup in Seattle. And has become one of my favorite bloggers already in the few months he’s been doing that.

Anyway, today he writes “It’s amazing to me how many startups I talk to plan on making money via advertising, tell me about all the big numbers they’re going to post, and haven’t done this basic math.”

This is something I’m thinking to myself more and more too as I meet more and more startups. There are a TON of startups chasing advertising dollars. I wonder to myself how many really will be successful? Sure PlentyOfFish has gone nuclear. But he’s a one-guy business who is in a highly engaged audience type (dating). He says he makes $10,000 a day or more from his Google ads. I believe him, too, cause he’s seeing millions of visitors a day.

Oh, and to those people who say I never say anything nice about Microsoft, note that I am praising Microsoft here (he runs on .NET and says his system runs on far fewer servers than his competitor, Match.com does).

Anyway, back to the point. Lots of these companies are funded by venture or rich investors. At some point the revenues will have to kick in or else the founder will be kicked out and the service sold.

I am watching TechCruch’s deadpool and I wonder if TechCrunch’s new CEO is going to do something really smart: grab these companies as they struggle for revenues like a goldfish gasping for breath in a small fishbowl. Then, aggregate them together and build a killer ad network (even the worst of the Web 2.0 sites I’ve seen have thousands of visitors and lashed together would make a killer Google ad network).

Remember who made out pretty well during the last downturn? Pud of “f’d company.” He got bigger and bigger as more and more people got laid off.

I wonder if Mike is looking to do the same in the consolidation phase?

Another aside: why was Twitter so hot at SXSW last week? There simply wasn’t much else cool to talk about. That tells me that the innovation funnel is pinched closed. What happens next? The strongest survive on their own. The weaker ones get picked up in a consolidation phase. Why? The companies with the best salespeople will be able to sell ads on networks made up of lots of smaller, weaker, players.

Anyway, what do you think. What will you do when the consolidation comes?

In the meantime, Loren Feldman is bored with all the Web 2.0 stuff. He cracks me up, here’s a fun short video (probably will get 10x the audience of my long and boring vids).

Ahh, nothing like the sound of shipping software on a Sunday evening. Adobe just turned on its servers to get the Apollo alpha software (Ryan Stewart has the scoop). For developers only. And even then I’d only go toward this stuff if you’re an early adopter who needs to be up to date on the latest stuff.

What will it let you do? Build Flash-centric apps that run on your desktop. One of the downsides of Web sites is that they cease to work if you aren’t connected to the Internet. Anyone who has tried to use Google Calendar inside an airplane can relate to that experience.

Lots of new apps ahead. Ryan Stewart has the best blog about the new Rich Internet Application space, which is what Apollo will let developers build apps for. Competes with Microsoft’s WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation).

First read? Microsoft is ahead in workflow and 3D, but Adobe is ahead in ubiquity and cross-platform. Lots of developers like using Macs now, and Microsoft only makes WPF tools for Windows. Also, there’s WPF/E (for “everywhere”) but it is a small subset of WPF, so developers might find that to be frustrating and limiting and decide to go with Apollo.

What do you think? If you’re a developer are you looking to build these kinds of connected desktop apps? If you are, what platform are you going to choose?

As with anything hot in tech, I’m putting the best posts on my link blog (another great Kathy Sierra post is on there now too).

Look at my last post. Now read this one over on LiveSide. It’s a short report that Microsoft executives are bragging to MVPs that “we’re in it to win.”

I don’t think Microsoft is. The words are empty. Microsoft’s Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that’s “in it to win” then I don’t get it. I saw a bunch of posts similar to the one on LiveSide coming out of the MVP Summit. I didn’t post any of them to my link blog for a reason: All were air, no real demonstrations of how Microsoft is going to lead.

Microsoft isn’t going away. Don’t get me wrong. They have record profits, record sales, all that. But on the Internet? Come on. This isn’t winning. Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform Web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative (where’s the video RSS reader? Blog search? Something like Yahoo’s Pipes? A real blog service? A way to look up people?) That’s how you win.

Oh, and Ballmer, if I ran Google your speech at Stanford yesterday would be plastered on every door on every campus Google has. Why? It’ll motivate Google employees the same way a coach will motivate an opposing team during the Superbowl by taking trash in the press. You’re up against a formidable competitor and one you’ve never seen before that has some real, significant weapons that you can’t deal with (and YouTube isn’t even close to it). Google’s secret weapon? It controls the entire stack in the datacenter. Google writes its own hard disk drivers. It has its datacenter hardware built to its spec. Ever wonder why Live.com is slower than Google? Hint: it’s cause Google is out executing Microsoft in the datacenter.

This isn’t Netscape you’re talking trash to, Steve. Have you really studied Google? It doesn’t sound like you have.

Again, Microsofties, you’d be better served not to talk trash until you have something YOU CAN SHIP!

I sure hope they don’t show up at Mix07 with this kind of “we’re in it to win” talk. The MVPs might be easy to talk into doing some cheerleading but the rest of us are over that now. We’re looking for signs of leadership and so far we don’t see it.

Sigh.

On Monday this week at SXSW I was waiting in line for BBQ at the IronWorks and someone said “you Robert Scoble?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m the guy who let you listen to my piano practice back in high school.” (He wrote a Web service that let me listen to his piano practicing, it was most cool. He lived in Atlanta at the time, I had just started working at Microsoft).

But the story gets better.

Turns out he’s now head of security at Facebook.

How did he get the job? He hacked into Facebook’s site. They hired him to fix the problems. Very unconventional. But smart. Lucky that Chris didn’t get arrested (he knows of other people who did the same thing to other companies who weren’t as lucky, so he doesn’t recommend it as a career path).

I knew Chris was gonna do something interesting by the time he was 21 (I first met him when he was 17). UPDATE: actually, I had never met him until Monday. I meant “met virtually” cause we had talked quite a bit back in 2003 via IM and other tools.

Joe Wikert, who works at Wiley (he’s an executive there) which is one of the world’s oldest (and biggest) book publishing companies asks some harsh questions about Microsoft’s search strategy.

In response to one of the questions, I answer that one reason that Microsoft talks about products before they are ready to ship is because we are continuing to ask Microsoft what is it doing in the Internet space. Ray Ozzie is smart to ignore us noisy bloggers and keep quiet until he and his team actually have shipping code.

Microsoft needs less talk and more action.

But, seriously, I’m hearing from all sorts of MSFTies that there are tons of reorgs going on and lots of blockages to shipping stuff. When I met with the six heads of Microsoft’s research labs around the world yesterday my first question was how they were going to ship the cool things they showed us yesterday (and there were some really cool demos and prototypes, more when I get my videos up, or read my link blog for some of the best coverage).

It’s weird being back at Microsoft just a few yards from the building I last worked at. I’m sitting in the front row with Jeff Clavier, Scott Beale, and a bunch of others (there are several hundred journalists here for Microsoft Research’s 15-year-blowout TechFest). You can listen in on MS Research’s TechFest site. Rick Rashid, head of Research, is on stage. So far not much interesting, will let you know what I see.

UPDATE: I’m Twittering it. Curtis Wong (who is one of the smartest people I met in my Microsoft travels) just showed off Sky Server, which lets you walk around the sky, much like you can with Google Earth. This is inspiring, it’s like having the Hubble Telescope to walk around right on your desktop.

It also demonstrates how much we lost when Jim Gray sailed his boat out of the Golden Gate never to be heard from again.

I just announced something over on my Twitter account and immediately got a flood of emails. It’s like a huge chat room. I’m adding all my followers so that I can follow them. It might look inane to you, but it’s a very engaged audience and there’s some very influential people there. We’re going to Salt Lick on Monday night, see the Twitter for details.

Speaking of that. I was named to the most important to the Web list over at PC World. That list is obviously suspect as a result, but I’m very honored. But I’m turning over my slot to David Heinemeier Hansson, author of Ruby on Rails. So many startups tell me they are using Rails that he should be on the list, not me.

Another guy? Scott Isaacs. Inventor of DHTML (without which AJAX wouldn’t be very interactive). Another one? Håkon Wium Lie. Inventor of CSS. Another one? Scott Guthrie, who runs Internet tools for Microsoft. How about Molly Holzschlag, who helps run the Web Standards Project? How about Mitchell Baker, head of the Mozilla Foundation?

Should I go on? I don’t deserve to be on this list. There are a lot more people who are doing a lot more for the Web than I am.

Ahh, the forgotten Robert Fripp recording is now up on Channel 9. It wasn’t forgotten. Just sort of lost. Marketing wanted it held until after Vista shipped. And my messy tape organizing kept it almost lost for months. But they found a recording. It’s one of the few recordings of Robert Fripp, guitarist, that exist (he doesn’t like to be filmed).

Interesting look into the creative process that led to the development of four notes that play when you start up Windows Vista.

I love this video. I could listen to Robert Fripp work for hours. I’m so honored that I got to sit on the floor at his feet and record him. Thanks to Steve Ball for inviting me over (he’s the guy you see in parts of the video). There was a small audience (about 10 people, if I remember right) so this is pretty historic video.

He plays music for quite a while on this video, so you can watch the creative process that went into the recording part of finding the four tones, then we go backstage for an interview with him and other Microsofties who were involved.