Ballmer: Microsoft Will Beat Google Eventually
Microsoft CEO is realistic but optimistic about the competition.
During an interview yesterday morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked about his thoughts on Twitter, Yahoo! and Google. Ballmer shared a lot of interesting information (including the fact that he has a twitter account under an undisclosed username for personal use), but the most interesting part of the interview was the CEO's view on Google's number one position in the search market.
As you can imagine, Steve Ballmer gets asked about overtaking Google in the search space a lot. Ballmer yesterday said that it's a hard question to answer, stating that really, there's no such thing as a 'good' response.
"There's no good answer to this question. If you say yes you seem like you're arrogant and if you say no it looks like you have no faith. So the answer is yes, someday," Ballmer told Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land.
Ballmer also said that Google's biggest asset is just that they were first. "The truth is, the number one thing Google benefits from is they did it right first," he said. Ballmer went on to say that search will be a bigger part of business for Microsoft going forward.
"I guarantee search is going to be a growing share of Microsoft's profits. That means it's first got to break even, then get bigger, but that's a growing share the way I do my math," he said. Ballmer said that Microsoft has also learned from Buzz, claiming that following the public backlash against Google's microblogging service, Redmond has been thinking more about piracy.
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no it wont... it already lost it memento, what ever is comming to beat google, isnt here yet... if it is, its still hidding then...
hey steve guess what other company got so big because it was 'first' in an area?
Bing is a good first step. It gives enough similar results to Google to be effective. Where Google makes it piles of money is in the click through ads on the side of the search results. The biggest hurdle to jump is just usage. Right now people use Google because they don't need anything more. Bing needs something unique that Google cannot copy. But to make money, Bing needs people to click through on the ads.
I think its one of those things like Windows.
Windows was the first, and for people who don't know much about computers, windows is the only option.
For search engines, google was the best and quickly took over. Now for many, if google does it right why look to use another?
My parents aren't exactly computer savvy, I know google is still their homepage, and they've never heard of Bing. And i don't expect them to, they don't need another search engine, much like they don't need another operating system, windows does it for them.
Yargh!