Ballmer on Bing, the economy, and more
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, on stage at D: All Things Digital with Walt Mossberg, introducing the company's revamped search engine, dubbed Bing.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)CARLSBAD, Calif.--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off his speech Thursday talking about the economy, though he also plans to show off Microsoft's revamped search engine within minutes.
In a speech at D: All Things Digital, Ballmer was asked by moderator Walt Mossberg to discuss the economy and how long the downturn will last. Ballmer said that he didn't expect the the economic collapse to be a 50-year-thing, but it won't turn around in three months either. (Thanks for narrowing that down)
"People generally agree this is a different recession," Ballmer said. "To think that things would be back in a year seems naive to me."
Had the economy not tanked, Ballmer said the company's research and sales and marketing would have continued to improve.
"You'll do less new," he said, in today's economy.
Update 8:20 a.m. PT: The talk is turning to search. Ballmer says Microsoft is willing to "upgrade" its talent when necessary.
"We're obviously where we are in search, " he said. "We want to do better, no question." 8:22 a.m. PT: More on search.
"It takes persistence," Ballmer siad. "We certainly flailed with Windows before we got it right,"
Now showing video on the introduction of search. Jokes about their naming plans and failed Yahoo bid.
And it's... BING.
"We wanted something that unambiguously said search," Ballmer said, explaining why Microsoft decided to rebrand Live Search.
8:30 a.m. PT: Ballmer now talking about why Bing. He said the company wanted something that was short, could be used as a verb and didn't have "negative or unusual" connotations.
He put the renaming in context.
"This is a very important step," Ballmer said. "It doesn't substitute for innovation."
Yusuf Mehdi comes on stage to demo Bing.
Ballmer interrupts to position how far Microsoft has come.
"There's no way to just change the whole game in one step," he said. "There's a lot of unmet needs in this category."
8:35 a.m. PT: Demo showing some of the key features. For example, search identifies best match, sometimes hiding other results when there is one clear match that someone is looking for.
Also includes customer service phone numbers when you search for a company like Amazon.com or Microsoft itself.
8:40 a.m. PT: Now showing the main interface of Bing--it's left hand navigation and breaking down of searches by categories. It's a mix of human and computer categorization, Microsoft said.
On the video search site, when you hover over a thumbnail result it starts playing right from the thumbnail.
8:45 a.m. PT:On to product search. Mehdi howing how it includes user and professional reviews gathered from a variety of sites.
Travel search gets integration with the Farecast site Microsoft bought. Farecast helps predict whether current rates and fares will go up or down.
Mossberg hits on one of the questions I raised about all the integration of content from other sites directly into Bing.
"How about all these people that expect to make money off their Web sites," Mossberg asks.
"Were not trying to get in the way of copyright holders," Ballmer said. "We're not trying to live off other people's work. We are just trying to make a good product."
Ballmer notes some of different ways content gets there. Some is licensed he said, other is what can be crawled "under copyright law."
"We license content to be in here," Ballmer said. "That's a way to do it."
8:45 a.m. PT: Mossberg asks Ballmer what makes him think this will do the trick. Ballmer says that phrasing implies things will change overnight, which they won't.
"My timeframe is 'lots of years'" Ballmer said.
Mossberg noted that Ask had an improved engine at one time that gained share after a relaunch, but the gains faded.
"Ask was not consistent," Ballmer said. "They didn't keep pounding and pounding."
8:55 a.m. PT: So how much is Microsoft spending on ads?
"We'll have a big budget," Ballmer said. "It was big enough that I had to gulp when I approved it," he said, adding that a gulp in a $60 billion company is a big thing
8:57 a.m. PT: The talk is shifting to smartphones.
Ballmer, not surprisingly, tries to paint the PC as the more important mobile devices.
"Most wireless data goes over PCs," he said. "It doesn't go over phones."
That said, Ballmer agreed that "smartphones are going to increase like crazy."
He said that 500 million smartphones a year are going to be sold over time. "I want to sell a very significant percentage of all of those through our partners," he said. "That is very important financially to us, strategically to us."
8:59 a.m. PT: The talk turns to Netbooks.
Walt Mossberg notes that the research the conference organizers did shows most people don't plan to buy a Netbook even when the economy improves. Ballmer says that has more to do with "fuzziness" around the Netbook brand. He said the figure would be a lot higher if the question asked how many people plan to by a notebook computer.
9:01 a.m. PT: Windows 7 is "on track" for holiday season.
Mossberg asked about enterprise adoption. Would Windows 7 be faster than Vista?
"Vista was faster than XP, ironically," Ballmer said. "Windows 7 has the potential to be faster still than Vista (in the enterprise)"
9:04 a.m. PT: On to questions. The first one comes from a venture capitalist that sees the new Office "ribbon" user interface as a productivity drain.
Ballmer said that "any time you make any change in the user experience of any thing you are going to have people" that don't like it.
"When they change the (Wall Street) Journal, I always hate it for a while," Ballmer said. "Software has that same characteristic."
9:05 a.m. PT: Next question is on search. User asks whether if he is searching for a "Hilton" in "Paris" he gets the result he wants or, perhaps some other result would come up.
(I'll do that search and let you know what happens).
9:07 a.m. PT:Esther Dyson asks about Microsoft's healthcare business.
Ballmer said that the company is investing in several areas, including business intelligence that can merge together several different electronic health records.
That's important, Ballmer said, because it is unlikely that even as records go digital that people will have just one place where all their health data is stored. "You are going to have several records," Ballmer said.
9:04 a.m. PT:A question on Netbooks and Windows 7. Ballmer says computer makers will be able to use Windows XP as well as many versions of Windows 7.
Have you met with Yahoo recently?
"I think there's a lot that can make sense in terms of a search partnership, not an acquisition," Ballmer said. "Whether such a thing will happen I don't know."
As for a meeting, Ballmer noted that Carol Bartz left a message for Ballmer in a book that the D makeup artist had people sign.
"The makeup couldn't fix me if it tried," Bartz wrote, according to Ballmer.
9:14 a.m. PT: Ballmer's done.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
When did you get it right?
Ina, post pictures -- oh, and a video, too!
Show me your bing!
Somehow, I think this is just another so-so brand (throw it at the wall see if it sticks) effort. (Even though I fully realize they're going to spend 150+ million advertising it over the next year)
I have a few questiions for Ballmer myself, as a shareholder:
Hey Ballmer, what is wrong with the name "Live search" ?
And if you think "Bing" is so cute, why the heck did you not use "Bing" when you changed "msn search" to "Live serach" a few years back?
Why the heck do you have to keep on changing the name of Microsoft's search engine all the time?
Did it coccur to you that you are totally confusing the users of Microsoft's search offerings, with all this constant name changes , and that is costing you valuable market share as confused users simply switch to other search engines?
Are you aware that the last time you switched from "msn search" to Live serach", you ended up losing market share from 15% market share(msn serach) to only 10% market share today for Live search?
Do you realise that neither Yahoo nor Google have ever changed the name of their search engines, but still have much bigger market share in search than Microsoft does?
Are you going to change the name of Microsoft search yet again from "Bing" to another name, if you continue to lose market share after introducing "Bing"?
If the answer is "yes", please may I remind you of one definition of "stupidity", which is: "Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result"?
Lets just take a look at all the search name changes you have kept confusing consumers with over the years shall we?
First we had
MSN Search
then
Live Search
then
Windows Live Search( if you think that's the same thing as Live Search, think again. You get slightly different search results under the Windows Live)
and now
Kumo/Bing
Please STOP already!
What is wrong with MSN Search or Microsoft Search or even Windows Search?
But no, Microsoft has to go and confuse it's search users even more with some name(Bing), which is defined in the dictionary as:
Pronunciation: (bing), [key]
?n. Brit. Dial.
a heap or pile.
or
Pronunciation: (bing), [key]
?v.i. Obs.
to go.
or
Pronunciation: (bing), [key]
?n.
a variety of dark red or blackish sweet cherry. Also called Bing' cher'ry.
http://dictionary.infoplease.com/bing
From the article:
"He put the renaming in context.
"This is a very important step," Ballmer said. "It doesn't substitute for innovation." "
Changing the name YET AGAIN is a "very important step" is it?
What's important about it?
You did it at least twice already, and it only resulted in Microsoft losing even more market share.
NeoMedia Technologies grandfathered this technology back in the mid 90?s and have been doing mobile code scanning and comparison shopping via barcodes long before any other company in this space.
NeoMedia on ABC & NBC News circa 2004:
http://www.qode.com/videos/PaperClickOnAbc7.wmv http://www.qode.com/videos/PaperClickOnNbc8.wmv
NeoMedia has a rich patent portfolio that covers scanning barcodes with a camera enabled mobile device to connect to the Internet, comparison shop, and/or retrieve online content.
http://www.qode.com/en/patents.jsp
MS has always been soooooo sure they knew what was best for you, the unintelligent consumer, better than you do yourself. To whom is it clear that I'm looking for what they call "one clear match"? Suppose I'm a Real Human and don't think like an MS robot ? This is about as unhelpful as any MS attempt at "help" I ever saw. No wonder people prefer Google...
" C'mon, C'mon you young whipper snappers, I can take you, yeh, yeh, you see, yeh that's the ticket, I'll murder the bums, yeh, c'mon you scardy cats! Get off my lawn, you young punks!"
- by LLIB_SETAG June 2, 2009 6:23 PM PDT
- Is Steve Ballmer OK? How is his health? He always looks like he's about to have a stroke, pop a vein & go totally psycho!!!
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(17 Comments)Dude, take a pill, for your sake & the health of your company.