The article below goes on to say that one of Microsoft’s problems is that it cannot retain talent like Google or Yahoo! can, and that is why it trails those two firms online. Whatever. That is a cliche reason and oversimplifies matters. Definitely, the inability to retain talent is a major consideration, but maybe one should consider why MSFT fails to retain talent. In fact, I would argue that even Google and Yahoo! have difficulty retaining talent. After all, Google and Yahoo are worth $100 and $40 billion respectively, you have to literally implode something to get anyone’s attention, and few explosions will make a dent in those mammoth companies. Alternatively, you can depart these firms, start something that is worth “only” $10 million and you will make more waves.
Anyway, it is not simply that MSFT cannot retain top talent like Yahoo! and Google can, it is that they are “a bit” slower than the other two to get innovation out of the door and onto people’s hands. Last year all three tech giants opened up their APIs to one extent or another (here is MSFT’s API page). They best one in terms of executing this strategy and seeing it go anywhere was Yahoo!
Note, admittedly, that I might be biased since I used Yahoo!’s API to roll out www.MetaMojo.com (though any day/week now, we’ll be migrating out of the Yahoo! API and onto our own proprietary index and crawler). But at least, it encouraged me to have some exchanges with Yahoo! management and give them some insight into what I was doing with MetaMojo.com specifically and the www.MojoSupreme.com network in general.
Google has less APIs to open and their Microsoftian global ambitions would freak out any potential entrepreneur. Ironically for once, it was Microsoft who could have been a leader on this front.
But… despite its mammoth sized piggy bank, it was too focused on monetizing the APIs to companies who had secured VC financing, and not opening it to entrepreneurs with no VC financing who need it most. Talk about a catch 22. When I saw the list of goodies MSFT was hoarding but opening up to the public, I thought that if they were to open them up to entrepreneurs, within one year, they could catch up Google and Yahoo! quite a bit. I envisioned (despite the technical limitations of my brain) at least 3-5 really solid products and applications. But, they wanted money for the APIs, which makes sense for a cash starved company who is in the leadership position of a market. But for a company with no leadership per se online and $30+ billion, it was, with all due respect to the powers that be in Redmond, an enormous wasted opportunity.
Had they allowed any entrepreneur to simply play with their tools, those same entrepreneurs would get aligned with MSFT instead of Google, Yahoo!, or in the case of many others, neither. Anyway, enough of my two cents:
Microsoft has come from behind to crush rivals before when it comes to online services. One obvious example: Way back when, it lagged far behind Netscape in the browser market but it eventually crushed Netscape with its now nearly ubiquitous Internet Explorer Web browser.
Given the company’s huge cash reserves and historical distaste for second place, it’s clear that Microsoft is going to make aggressive moves to catch up with its competitors. But when it comes to search, is it possible the company is just too far behind its rivals?
As of January, Google had 48.2 percent of the Internet search market and Yahoo! commanded a 22.2 percent share, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. MSN Search, by contrast, had 11 percent, and that was down 1.8 percentage points from a year earlier.
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