Microsoft to dispute Google in the search engine race

Microsoft to dispute Google in the search race

September 2, 2004

A spirited Steve Ballmer said yesterday that Microsoft is really determined in challenging Google for leadership in the search business.

"It'll be a lot of fun for the rest of you to watch," Ballmer shouted to the delight of several hundred guests at a meeting of the Massachusetts Software Council in Boston.

Ballmer, who took over as chief executive from cofounder Bill Gates in 2000, came to Boston for meetings with customers. He also visited the Timothy Smith Foundation, which runs computer technology centers in the Roxbury area. There, Ballmer and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino unveiled a donation of $400,000 in Microsoft products.

At the software council meeting, Ballmer scoffed at the idea that the technology industry's boom times are over. "The next 10 years will bring more positive changes . . . than the last 10 years did," he said. Then he listed a host of challenges the industry has not met.

For example, Ballmer wondered why many of his listeners were jotting down notes as he spoke. "Why isn't this meeting being recorded electronically?" he asked. "Why isn't it being broadcast on the wireless network in this room? . . . It's just a question of software."

Ballmer also pointed to healthcare, which he called "one of the least computerized businesses in the world."

And despite those ever-present ads on the Internet, Ballmer said, online advertising can still be vastly improved, to produce systems that consistently show Internet users exactly those ads that might interest them.

"I see a world of incredible possibility and opportunity," Ballmer said. But he conceded that Microsoft has barriers to overcome. There's the long-delayed new operating system, code-named Longhorn.

Last week, the company set a deadline of late 2006 to complete the new software, but gave up on including a new technology for managing data files. It was once one of Longhorn's key selling points, but Microsoft officials decided it was too complex to finish Longhorn in time.

In the near term, Microsoft's biggest challenge may be the perception that its software is riddled with bugs that let computer vandals seize control of sensitive systems or infect them with viruses.

"That's a major impediment," said Ballmer, "and so we as a company have made security our job one priority."

Ballmer urged those in the audience to install the latest "service pack" for the Windows XP operating system. The service pack is mainly a set of modifications to Windows XP that are supposed to make it far less vulnerable to vandalism.

Meanwhile, Ballmer left no doubt that Microsoft has targeted Internet search services for the kind of all-out competitive push that the company once used to seize dominance in Web browser software.

Despite Google's popularity, "the search market is still quite fragmented," Ballmer said, and existing tools still generate lots of useless results. Ballmer said Microsoft plans to invent new search technology that will change this, and make life more difficult for Google and other rivals.

Source: Boston.com

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