Little-Known Fact: I Made the Screen Blue … to Match My Eyes
by John Paczkowski
Posted on May 9, 2007 at 12:14 PM PT
Google’s gains in search advertising have really gotten to Microsoft, and Bill Gates in particular. So much so that the Microsoft chairman plans to spend his remaining 15 to 18 months of full-time employment with the company focused on developing online and advertising services.
Speaking at Microsoft’s annual Strategic Account Summit for large advertisers and partners yesterday, Gates said that his efforts will be mainly directed toward “search, … buyers and sellers … that will be my biggest thing.”
“When people go to the Internet, they have a task in mind,” Gates remarked at the summit. “And it’s not just to see a list of links. This is not a ‘Hey, I’m paid to go do treasure hunts.’ They want to organize a trip, or learn about a topic, and the idea that we can capture things at that task level, and through the magic of software make that far better. And in particular when it’s where you want to buy something, that the people who want to buy something that the people who want to advertise, who want to offer up that maybe they’re the place that you want to do business with, I think we can make that far better.”
With Google poised to extend its dominance from text-based ads into graphical advertising through its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, Gates has a lot on his plate.
