Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Microsoft Expected to Debut Updated Search Engine at D: All Things Digital
The long-awaited upgrade to Microsoft’s search engine will soon make its debut. Sources with knowledge of the situation said the company is expected to demonstrate it at our D: All Things Digital conference next week.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is scheduled to appear onstage at the event, a three-day event that hosts top players from the tech and media industries in interviews by All Things Digital Co-executive Editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
Code-named “Kumo,” the search engine is Microsoft’s effort to raise its hand to table stakes in the battle for search market share with Google.
Windows Mobile 6.5 might be a necessary stopgap on the path to 7.0, if not exactly an elegant one. But what can you expect from an OS with such a hurried path to launch? Not much, according to Microsoft developers who admit that the incremental update was a rush job that suffers from all of the problems attendant thereto.
It was like a liveblogging tournament this past week–one that included a lot of the big players, but ended in a three-way tie.
As if the Zune weren’t embarrassing enough… Microsoft and Verizon are reportedly discussing a touchscreen multimedia cellphone that could launch on the carrier’s network in 2010. The project is codenamed “Pink” and will apparently involve some ungodly combination of Windows Mobile and Zune software.
Welcome back to Weekend Update, where we showcase some of the highlights from this site over the past week. In the umpteenth round of the old versus new media match, the Associated Press in its annual meeting this week played into the stereotype of the grizzled no-nonsense editor who shakes his fist at the new interweb thing (or was it intertube?) and its feisty friend, Google News, who are running amok on his lawn.
Looks like Microsoft just lost the sole advantage its CEO Steve Ballmer claimed it had over Google in search: the ability to experiment. The search sovereign made two changes to its search results pages Tuesday that it says will produce better results for complicated searches.
Technically, the term refers to the frenzied flow of games and the intensity of the contenders for the NCAA Championship crown. But the NCAA doesn’t have a corner on “March Madness”–those descriptors work well in other instances, too. To wit:
As steady and reliable as a McDonalds hamburger, comScore’s monthly search metrics–and about as exciting. February’s search rankings were much like January’s, which were much like December’s, which were.… Well, you see where this is headed. Succinctly speaking, Google’s share of Internet searches in the U.S.: large. Everyone else’s: small.
What an uncomfortable moment for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the CIO Summit Wednesday. Fielding questions at the event, Ballmer was asked how best to handle workers who prefer consumer handsets like the iPhone to Windows Mobile devices, which are more apt to meet the security requirements of large organizations. His answer left something to be desired.
What’s Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s latest thinking on a search deal with Microsoft? Your guess is as good as any because Bartz isn’t saying. Asked at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference yesterday whether she favors such a deal, Bartz said she prefers to discuss it in boardrooms, not auditoriums or the media. “I am not going to negotiate with my 55,000 favorite friends,” she quipped.
Temping has never been the most rewarding of vocations–especially at Microsoft. Soon it will be even less so. In an effort to adjust to the “realities of a deteriorating economy,” the company is slashing contractor pay rates.
