|
Microsoft will beat Google in the online advertising market through
sheer tenacity during the next five years, not by offering a new or
radically different online strategy, according to chief executive
Steve Ballmer. Ballmer, speaking at a Churchill Club lunch in
Silicon Valley promised to "bootstrap" Microsoft's advertising
engine with search, IM and Hotmail, Windows Live and Office Live,
and sign partnerships with companies "large and small" that add
value to those both buying online ads.
"We are hard at work on our own core services," Ballmer told an
audience of tech executives and investors. "We will dive MSN hard
but in Windows Live, the goal is to give the user a very customized
and personalized view to manage RSS feeds, create your own custom
portal [and] create an ecosystem around search."
Calling Microsoft a "Johnny-come-lately" to online advertising,
Ballmer said the next several years are "critical" for Microsoft.
"We have tenacity and patience to go after something... our patience
distinguishes us from many tech companies that get impatient. It
probably makes sense to talk about five years... you won't see an
overnight transformation. It's going to have to be a long-term
thing," Ballmer said. That sameness of service will likely
disappoint investors expecting a "Google or Yahoo! killer" to emerge
from a $2bn plus spending program next year. Ballmer said Microsoft
is prioritizing spending on a "platform cloud," storage cloud to
find and rendezvous with users, programming platform, advertising
and payment infrastructure. |