Microsoft is poise to slither into another market segment: search engines. This isn’t just part of their plan to dominate the world, oh no. It’s a benefit to all humanity, or at least to the small portion of humanity with Internet access:
“Search engines are doing a good job but not a perfect job,” said [Microsoft executive] Koenigsbauer, adding most search results today “don’t deliver the results people are looking for.”
What a pile of mendacious crap. You can find everything you need to know with Google. It’s darn near perfect once you’re good at searching with it. Heck, it’s fantastic even when you’re not.
If the past is any guide, Microsoft will come up with something that’s 80% as good, then drive Google into the ground by out-marketing it and making it the default search engine for Internet Explorer. Then we’ll be left with one fewer company to come up with new innovations and improvements. Search engines will be as stagnant as word processors, spreadsheets, and Web browsers, markets that Microsoft already dominates.