Microsoft’s real problem

May 2, 2008 By

I almost wrote a very long blog post telling Microsoft how it could get back into the search business. In response to all this stuff in the Wall Street Journal and on TechMeme about how Steve Ballmer is telling employees that he thinks he can guide Microsoft into the advertising business without buying Yahoo.

I got about halfway through that long post and I just deleted it. Why? Because they don’t care to listen. So why am I wasting my time talking at 1:30 a.m. to a few billionaires and a bunch of arrogant coders who think they built something of value when, in fact, they’ve just built second-rate Web sites (Windows Live Spaces anyone, sorry, it sucks even if there are 100 million of them) who don’t have a clue about how to get back into the search game and who are never going to have a clue?

I’m bored. Microsoft buying Yahoo is just going to be very boring for users for a long time. Why? Even if things go perfectly it’ll take six to 12 months to get approval by EU and DOJ. And they won’t go perfectly. Even after the deal is done it’ll be another six to 12 months before these two cultures get together in any significant way. So, that’s a year to two before we even see anything non-boring.

I find that Google listens a lot more than Yahoo or Microsoft does. Google has left billions of dollars on the table that it will go after over the next year, if they are as smart as I think they are.

Where are those billions? Well, let’s just look at one tiny little sliver of Google’s system that it’s left alone. Google Travel. That page sucks. Think about how you decide to take a trip. Does that page help? Not really. No video. No cool people telling you about interesting places. No personality. No branding. No interesting Web services.

And the big brand travel sites aren’t any better. Now, what about parenting? Other activities?

This is why Facebook is so interesting as a business. Facebook has some inherent advantages to creating market need that no one else is even attempting to do. Ask Jeff Pulver how he gets hundreds of people to show up to his breakfasts all over the world. He just opens up a Facebook page and writes what he’s doing.

Or, ask any winery how much of an impact this small little video show is having on their business. The red carpet rolled out on our little wine tasting trip told me everything I needed to know about its impact.

Funny, Microsoft just bought Farecast, which is one piece of what I’m thinking about, but will Microsoft do anything innovative with it? I think it’s distracted with this purchase. Too distracted to do anything soon enough to keep the newbies like Mahalo and the Googlers’ from figuring it out.

I just don’t see Microsoft and Yahoo making any serious moves into search or advertising that comes off of search, do you? Yet I see that Google is weak in other areas (and I told them such when I met with them the other day — they listened, and that listening behavior told me they know that they are going to see more growth in non-search areas if they execute well). It stuns me why Ballmer isn’t going after those areas (as bad as Google’s Travel page is, Microsoft’s is worse) instead of spending billions trying to buy Yahoo, who clearly doesn’t want to be purchased (Farecast, again, was an interesting purchase, but only if put inside a bigger strategy).

Unfortunately Ballmer is hamstrung by two things: 1. the returns that they need to see to have any real effect on the bottom line are so huge that it causes Ballmer to have blindness to small things and 2. they really don’t have that many people working there who really grok the Internet. Think about that for a second. If you really knew how to build a scalable web site, wouldn’t you be joining Facebook or FriendFeed right now instead of toiling inside Microsoft where they can’t even seem to execute on a purchase of Yahoo very well? Heck, just reading Mini Microsoft tells you that things aren’t being seen well from inside the walls. Yeah, there are those inside Microsoft who are happy with the way things are going, but I’m hearing more and more screams lately from inside the walls. I hope to learn more when I go to Seattle June 10-13 to visit Microsoft and learn more about the Internet strategy (which is becoming more interesting on several fronts like what Scott Guthrie, tools, Ray Ozzie, Mesh and infrastructure, and Dean Hachamovitch, IE, teams are doing).

I don’t see the Yahoo acquisition ending well for Microsoft but I’m losing my will to care anymore and I’m not the only one. THAT is Microsoft’s real problem.

Google: take the money off the table — build great niche search sites around topics like travel, wine, parenting, housing, automobiles, etc. You have a year to do it before Microsoft can even START to figure out where you’re weak.

Too bad that Ballmer didn’t have a vision for the Internet. Imagine if Microsoft started doing some really great niche sites with its $40+billions? Imagine that…

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Why Microsoft Live Mesh will fail with early adopters

May 1, 2008 By

OK, OK, forget for a moment that many early adopters are serious Mac fans and are trying to wash Microsoft out of their hair.

I’ve stumbled onto what really is challenging for companies that want me to load software onto my computer: when something goes wrong we start uninstalling everything to see if there’s something the matter. And things with limited utility are gonna stay uninstalled.

Joel Spolsky said this yesterday about Live Mesh, but came at it another way.

I just had a problem with Skype video and I uninstalled everything to see if I could get my system to behave. Guess what? After uninstalling 10 things Skype video works great. I need Skype video a lot more than I need backup.

So, guess what goes? Everything but Skype video.

Fail. And we wonder why most of what gets the hype lately is Web sites? Here you go. Sorry Ray Ozzie.

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The users’ point of view on Microsoft and Yahoo

April 28, 2008 By

I’ve stayed out of the Microsoft attempted merger of Yahoo so far. But EVERYONE seems to be talking about it from all sorts of angles.

Me? I take the user’s point of view and that’s one I haven’t seen discussed much yet.

Will Yahoo moving to Microsoft be a good thing for users? Let’s take a tour.

Yahoo Messenger users and MSN Messenger users. Wash to bad things for Yahoo’s messenger. They already work together and I doubt that having two huge teams with two huge user bases of hundreds of millions of people trying to work together will bring much new. At worst case the Yahoo team will leave and so Yahoo’s Messenger will stop seeing new features.

Yahoo Mail and Hotmail users. Wash to bad things for Yahoo’s Mail. Same as with the messenger side of things. Eventually I can see Yahoo’s Mail get frozen and so bugs and things won’t get fixed on Yahoo’s side and I can see pressure (advertising, etc) to pull people off of Yahoo and put them on Hotmail or whatever they are calling it now (Microsoft Windows Live Mail).

Flickr. The users of Flickr are very scared of what a Microsoft purchase might mean. But here Microsoft has no significant player, so they’ll probably try to keep the development team intact. Plus, there are a lot of smart people at Microsoft who are into photography (Ansel Adams’ son Michael was at Microsoft Researcher Curtis Wong’s wedding, for instance) So, good things could happen here for Flickr’s users.

Delicious? No real Microsoft competitor and tons of Microsofties love Delicious, so good things ahead, just like Flickr.

Yahoo Maps and Live Maps? I like Microsoft’s Maps better, but there’s some tricks that Yahoo does better. So, if these teams get along we’d probably see an improved version of both services, although I doubt they’d remain separate code bases.

Yahoo Search and Microsoft Live Search? Microsoft is already gaining on relevancy, so that tells me there are still a few smart people at Microsoft working on search. They just don’t have a brand name worth s**t. So, Yahoo’s brand name on top of Microsoft’s search will help Microsoft out a lot. I doubt that we’ll see a Google killer out of the joining of these two companies, though. The sales teams will be joined and will prove profitable for Microsoft. For users, though? I doubt we’ll see anything for years in terms of dramatically better search.

Developer tools and such? Microsoft isn’t threatened by anything Yahoo is doing, although the Pipes and Fire Eagle and other Yahoo teams will probably love working at Microsoft. For users? Join those tools into Ray Ozzie’s new Mesh and we could see some cool new stuff.

Portals? Yahoo’s has more users, more respect, and more features. I don’t see anything major for users either way there.

Finance and Personals sites? I doubt users will see much change there.

So, for users, there’s some negatives, and some positives.

How do you see the Yahoo/Microsoft merger affecting users?

As to Microsoft employee morale? That’ll end up a positive in this deal. After all, Microsoft employees will see their stock go up, not down. That drives morale more than anything.

For board members? Marc Andreessen covers that.

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Ray Ozzie delivers with Live Mesh

April 22, 2008 By

Microsoft’s fans are delivered to the promised land.

For three years now I’ve wondered “what is Ray Ozzie up to?” And with this announcement you see just why he’s Microsoft’s CTO. Yeah, there are about 100 smart people working on Microsoft’s new “Live Mesh” which was turned on tonight, but this is Ray’s coming out party, as much as anything.

It also gives key insights into how Microsoft is going to keep Windows relevant and keep us all from sliding into a Web that doesn’t rely much on the underlying operating system. Will Microsoft succeed in that? Well, they better otherwise we’re all very close to washing Microsoft out of our hair: forever.

It’s very hard to explain it all in a few words. It took 1.5 hours this morning for them to peel off the covers and show me all of Mesh’s feed goodness and start to explain what’s coming. What Mesh is today is mostly some end user functionality that looks like Plaxo Pulse done right, but if you stop right there and either get excited or dismiss it, you’ll miss the point entirely.

Yes, the synchronization features that most of you will notice when you start up the Live Mesh are pretty cool. Unfortunately they aren’t even close to being finished. Mac support? Coming in the future. Nokia support? Unclear. iPhone support? Ask Steve Jobs (translation: will be very limited due to Apple’s complete control of that platform). Firefox support? Yes! Linux support? What’s that?

When you start up the Mesh you get a desktop and you can build a new folder and you can drag stuff into that folder and share it. Simple enough. Then you can add a piece of software to each of your machines (XP or Vista right now only, Mac later this year) and that folder will be automatically synced.

But if you stop right there you’ll say “isn’t that like FolderShare?” Yes, it is.

Keep looking.

There’s a Window that has news generated by the sync system. Hmm, this looks vaguely familiar. Sorta like Facebook’s news feed. With a dash of Twitter thrown in. Funny that they showed me a prototype of how Twitter and Facebook items could be shoved in there. Oh!

Let’s keep looking.

There’s a way to wrap up Web sites into a sandbox’ed app and take them offline. Oh, cool.

So, what’s doing this? MOE!

The “Mesh Operating Environment.”

What does it have? An HTTP server (aka a Web server). That lets the Mesh run stuff that’s offline.

And MOE also has handlers for many wire formats including ATOM, JSON, FeedSync, RSS, WB-XML, and POX.

Now wait a second. This thing understands feeds underneath its covers! And it’s not just one way RSS the way, say, Google Reader treats RSS. It’s a new two-way system that both receives Atom (default) or RSS feeds from other MOE’s as well as sends them out to other MOEs.

And, everything has a URI so you can subscribe to everything in the system with, say, Google Reader. Hmmm. I wonder what Dave Winer will think about this system.

We haven’t even gotten into the developer SDK. They spent about an hour showing me how to build new kinds of syncable apps on top of the Mesh in a variety of tools.

Now you’re just getting a taste of how Microsoft is going to use the Mesh to stay relevant. It is bringing its developers onto the Internet in an interesting new way.

Is this ready for mom and dad to run? I’d wait, this needs some major testing and hashing out. But developers should absolutely take a look at this.

Several Microsofties pointed out that this is only a small portion of the Mesh strategy that’ll be revealed in October at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference.

TechCrunch’s initial post is now up, and that Microsoft will have several videos on its Channel 9 Website. UPDATE: Here’s the first with Ray Ozzie. Keep tuned to Twitter all night, cause we’ll discuss this in depth 140 characters at a time.

UPDATE: I didn’t even mention the identity system, er, social network underneath this.

UPDATE2: Mary Jo Foley has “10 things you need to know about Mesh.”

UPDATE3: It’s already on TechMeme, with tons of other info linked off of there.

UPDATE4: it’s fun to watch the news flow. Here’s a search for Microsoft Mesh on FriendFeed. Here’s one on TweetScan, which shows every Twitter message that mentions Microsoft Mesh. Here’s Google Blog Search, which shows all blogs that mention Microsoft Mesh.

UPDATE5: On10.net, another Microsoft video site, has a video demo that’s similar to the one I got today.

UPDATE6: the Mesh team has its own blog.

Jeff Sandquist already got things underway on Twitter.

I’m sure we’ll do some Qik videos tonight too to show off some of why I say this demonstrates Microsoft has a compelling Internet platform and strategy now.

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Ray Ozzie’s day in the Mesh

April 22, 2008 By

Later today Microsoft will bring out the Mesh. They are being pretty cagey about the details (I learn more at an 8 a.m. meeting, and from what it sounds like they will embargo everything until around 9 p.m. Pacific Time tonight.

So, what is it? Well, there certainly is lots of speculation on blogs. I’ll stay out of that business until I get a look for myself.

One thing I’ve heard is that this is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming from Ray Ozzie’s team. Which is why Rocky and me are headed up to Seattle on June 10-12 (to get a closer look at Microsoft’s Internet strategies, and meet up with a bunch of startups).

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