March 9, 2009

Well, raise my rent. Microsoft is the good guy!

There is a memorable moment in Blazing Saddles, when Sheriff Bart says, "Well, raise my rent. You are the kid."

I had a similar ephiphany last month at SES London 2009, when David Naylor of Bronco said that Microsoft is the good guy in the search engine industry during a session on "Brand & Reputation Management."

Now, I should disclose that I was the director of corporate communications at Lotus Development Corp. back in the late 1980s, when our relationship with Microsoft was -- ah -- "complicated." They provided the operating system that our applications ran on; while they offered applications that we competed with.

During the 1990s, I was the director of corporate communications at Ziff-Davis. And our relationship with Microsoft was also -- ah -- "complex." On the "church" side of Ziff-Davis, our 400 editors and reporters wrote comparative, lab-based, product reviews that treated Microsoft "without fear or favor," like any other vendor. On the "state" side of Ziff-Davis, Microsoft bought a ton of advertising in our magazines, on our websites and for our cable TV channel. Plus, Bill Gates was a frequent keynote speaker at our conferences, and Microsoft paid a chunk of money for big booths at our trade shows. So, when I got into the search engine industry in early 2002, I admit that I had some preconceived notions about the folks from Redmond. And I secretly chuckled when I heard that Google's informal corpate motto was "Don't be evil." I knew which company they were taking a jab at.

But that was then and this is now.

During the past seven years, Microsofties have been model citizens. Heck, even the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has impressed me by working globally to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and working locally to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology.

Still, it came as a surprise to me when Naylor said such nice things about Microsoft. It reminded me of another memorable quote from Blazing Saddles, "I think Mongo here's taken a liking to you."

So, I interviewed Naylor right after the "Brand & Reputation Management" session. In the early part of the video interview, he shared a few tips. He also emphasized the importance of identifying who is posting negative material about your company or brand. But half way through the video interview, I asked to Nayor discuss Microsoft's reputation and why it has improved. He says Microsoft now excels at handling not just business to business but business to consumer and Google has challenges they have not yet resolved.

David Naylor, CEO, Bronco Internet, on reputation management at SES London

As luck would have it, one of the people who attended the "Brand & Reputation Management" session was Mel Carson, the adCenter Community Manager in Europe for Microsoft. Carson joined Microsoft back in the summer of 2005, so we never crossed swords in the old days. As part of Microsoft Advertising, his role is to build relationships within the online advertising community to support, educate and evangelise through Microsoft adCenter industry forums, and to speak about internet marketing at conferences, trade shows and other events.

For the last year Carson has been writing a digital blog for Media Week and at his own site, Mel Carson. You can also follow him at http://Twitter.com/MelCarson. He is a credit to his company.

In the best tradition of ambush journalism, I interviewed Carson about his favorite panel sessions from SES London. He cited panels on topics such as social media, SEO, search behavior, and keyword research. But about half way through the interview, I asked Carson about the changing reputation of Microsoft and why Microsoft is now seen in a more positive light.

Mel Carson, Microsoft adCenter, highlights panels at SES London 2009

So, there you have it. You may have noticed this before. But that was the first time that I recognized that Microsoft wasn't evil. It's the good guy.

Both Naylor and Carson will be speaking at SES New York 2009 in two weeks at the "Extreme Makeover: Live Ad Copy & Continuity Clinic" on Thursday. So, you can ask them about this topic, before or after they examine your ads and landing pages "without fear or favor."

Well, don't just stand there looking stupid, grasping your hands in pain. How about a round of applause for the Redmond Kid?

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 2:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

March 19, 2007

Microsoft Sucks, According to Robert Scoble

Former Microsoft Live evangelist Robert Scoble is now saying "Microsoft Sucks".

Scoble wrote in his Scobleizer blog, "the words are empty . . . Microsoft's Internet execution sucks (on the whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks. If that's 'in it to win', then I don't get it."

Not the best reply for someone who used to trumpet the abilities of Microsoft.

The former Microsoft employee is now asking, "Microsoft: stop the talk. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon, a better cross-platform web development ecosystem than Adobe, and get some services out there that are innovative."

Posted by Frank Watson at 1:21 PM | Permalink

November 28, 2006

Live's Erik Selberg On Microsoft's Tough Search Challenge

Talk about the echo chamber coming full circle. The stats on Microsoft's search share decline that I posted last week were commented on by Erik Selberg of Microsoft's Live.com search team in his General disarray at The Big 3 post. He provides a fresh, honest assessment of Microsoft's search challenge ahead from someone in the rank-and-file:

Microsoft will continue to lose share until it can make Live.com something people chose versus just the IE default. That will happen when the average person starts to see Live.com as a bit better than Google. Right now, Google wins on brand (people like them a lot) and quality, so it's to be expected that existing Yahoo / Live customers will migrate to Google than vice-versa and new customers will pick Google more than Live or Yahoo.

If that sounds dismal, it gets worse:

Google is making people focus on features, which should tell people that they're worried about how we're catching up, and are going to put more people on their core products to keep and extend their lead. So it's going to be a tough, tough battle for Microsoft to get there

And how long a battle? We've had Microsoft execs say it would take months to overtake Google in quality to years, with the spin that we're still in the early days. Erik's in the realistic years camp:

While our management set the goal of having relevance that beat Google after 2 years (then 3, and I believe 4 now…) it's not realistic to think that it can be done quickly. If you ask Google, Yahoo, or the fine SEOs at WebMasterWorld or other such places, they'll all say that Live Search has increased in quality over the years so that it's much closer to Yahoo and Google. Not yet better, but no longer laughable. And yeah, we've done our own share of copying feature parity, and we're starting to do a few things that cause Google and Yahoo to do the same (ok, noODP is a small feature, but it's a start!).

How about some optimism? Erik sees Google's stability working against it in some ways, making it stagnant (see my Why Search Sucks & You Won't Fix It The Way You Think post for more on that concept). Potentially, this is true. But realistically, I think the fact that Google has changed slowly is reassuring to the searching audience.

Microsoft has changed four or five times in radical ways over the past two years, including an entire brand change. The last service to change so much like this was AltaVista, which I joked could give Madonna a run for her money in the image change department. None of those changes helped AltaVista. For Microsoft, I think it would actually benefit from really locking down the overall look-and-feel for an extended period. The good news is, I suspect that's actually going to be the case. New features seem likely to be added, but yet another redesign doesn't seem in the works.

I actually think Google's weakness is the same as the weakness Erik sees with Yahoo:

Yahoo is just in a rough place. They've got Google dominating, and they've got us coming up from behind. So they're trying to do everything to avoid getting squeezed everywhere… and the result is too many people doing too many things in a mediocre way (the buzz-speak is “not enough critical mass in several areas”). Nothing surprising here either.

On the upside for Google and Yahoo lovers, both companies themselves understand this. The now famous Yahoo "Peanut Butter" memo covers some at Yahoo internally understanding the issue, while in October, it came out that Google was supposedly refocusing on core product and cutting new releases -- and that all the frenetic activity had been hurting core search there.

Fully recognizing the challenge ahead, Erik's still optimistic

Hopefully the chaos that starts out with a new Senior VP turns into increased efficiency sooner versus later. I know I'm working as hard as I can to make this happen sooner versus later, but nevertheless, it's gonna be a stand-up fight against someone who has reach over us. Time to be smart.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:18 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

The Inside Scoop from Search Bloggers

The major search engines all have unofficial bloggers talking about what's going on in their respective companies. At a recent SES session, search-blog stars Jeremy Zawodny, Gary Price, Matt Cutts and Niall Kennedy all revealed their modus operandi, and guest writer Sara Holoubek was there to capture their insights for today's SearchDay article, Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:44 PM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

Robert Scoble Departs Microsoft To Startup Podtech

Blogvangelist Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft to work for start-up Podtech.net. Robert's not been tied into the Microsoft search efforts, but he has commented publicly on them on many occasions, providing an unofficial voice in the way he's done on many things Microsoft. His departure certainly is a PR blow to Microsoft.

Robert Scoble leaving Microsoft for a Silicon Valley startup from Niall Kennedy is a nice, short rundown on the news. Niall was a recent PR win for Microsoft in terms of bloggers, so perhaps he'll benefit from Robert's departure.

Microsoft's top blogger Robert Scoble is leaving from Silicon Valley Watcher has the first news on Robert leaving. Robert himself has thoughts up in Correcting the Record about Microsoft.

Podtech, FYI, is down both for me and Barry, probably under the traffic for everyone checking it out. That's not a good sign, though I'm sure they'll recover.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:59 AM | Permalink

September 23, 2005

Recapping Official Search Engine Blogs

Search Engine Blogs as Public Relations Tools from Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal is a nice overview of how the various major search engines are turning more and more to blogs as a communication tool, with continuing unofficial help from employee blogs such as those from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny and Google's Matt Cutts (hey, Google, get his blog listed in your Blogs By Googlers section on the Google Blog already!).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:10 AM | Permalink

February 3, 2005

More Google & Yahoo Employee Blogs

I posted earlier about a list of Google and Yahoo employee blogs. Here are two more spotted via Nathan at InsideGoogle, one for Google, one for Yahoo. And Microsoft employee blogs? Nathan notes blogs.msdn.com is the place for them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:09 PM | Permalink

October 12, 2004

Jeremy Zawodny: Yahoo Search Blogvangelist

Jeremy Zawodny is a Yahoo employee who once worked on the search side and now returns to it, as he explains more here: New Job (Again).

Search is also one of the things Jeremy has touched on in his personal blog, with some of the best reading dings at Google and even his own employer, at times.

That blog, he notes in explaining his new position, has had much to do with his move into the new role of improving search products, communication about search, gathering feedback and recruiting people.

What I find most significant is that the move positions him as the first notable blogvangelist employed by a major search company.

Sure, Google has its own blog, launched in May. Yahoo has one as well, launched in August. It's more active than Google's, completely focused on search and frankly often times more interesting. But both remain corporate blogs. They don't reflect the unfiltered views of an individual.

Microsoft has had this type of blogger personality in the form of Robert Scoble. He's someone who works from Microsoft, is vocal about things there but doesn't necessarily follow the party line. He was also instrumental in pulling together Microsoft's recent Search Champs initiative.

As a long reader of Jeremy's blog, he's always been that way as well -- a personality who speaks his mind, regardless of what his employer may think. With his new role in search, we ought to hear more interesting firsthand accounts of someone on the frontline of the search wars.

Meanwhile, will Google and others feel compelled to find their own search personalities to speak to the blogosphere? Google actually has the longest standing unofficial spokesperson around, in the form of GoogleGuy. However, GoogleGuy has to date only participated in the forumsphere.

Search forums have been a key public relations front for all the search engines, given how search marketers will dissect any move and report on the latest findings through them. Now blogs seem to be opening up as a new PR front to compete in.

A recent Google Blog entry did see GoogleGuy edge into the blog world for the first time. However, he remains anonymous. Lifting the lid on his identity (an open secret among many involved in search marketing) might give Google a search personality of its own.

Postscript: Jeremy provides more thoughts and reactions into his new role: Honesty and Blogvangelism

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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