[ Friday ]
Live Search from Microsoft...Irrelevant, For Now
--
The title says it all. From several of the most recent surveys conducted on search traffic across the Internet, Microsoft's search engine (now called 'Live Search') has been mostly invisible in terms of usage. Google clearly dominates the category worldwide, and for good reason.
--
For advertisers, Google is a breeze to use, if not somewhat pricey. Those few cents per text ad click-thru often have minimums, with many advertisers bidding dollars-per-click to maintain a high visibility. Microsoft, by comparison, initially put forth a site with little or no thought...one that was not intuitive, was difficult to edit, and one for which many potential advertisers most likely abandoned...even after receiving 'free' advertising credits to sign on.
--
But don't despair. Microsoft is able to dump a great deal of money into a project, sit back and wait for the market to embrace it, or MS simply buys the competition. X-Box is one example, but Internet Explorer, Zune, and other products have also had a steep acceptance curve.
--
Meanwhile, Google continues to flourish by providing an exceptional product to its users, while providing a lot of other 'freebies' in the marketplace to entice users to their site (like Blogger, Google Earth, Documents, G-Mail, etc.).
MM [12:31]