What’s Google’s fatal flaw? Microsoft spending $100M to call it out

May 25, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

AdAge reports that Microsoft has budgeted up to $100 million to advertise Bing, its yet-unlaunched search engine, on TV, on radio, online and in print. The Bing campaign is so big that ad agency JWT has hired additional creative staff, according to AdAge.

Getting customers to switch from Google will be tough. Internal Google tests found that most users favored results branded with the Google logo, even when Google swapped logos with another search engine to serve supposedly inferior results under its own brand.

What’s Bing like? The site isn’t live yet. No one seems able to nail down the difference between Bing and Google in one simple sentence. AdAge says:

People who’ve seen the Microsoft product suggest it’s useful and has some nifty filtering tools, even though it’s not a markedly different-looking interface, at least for text search (some of the multimedia search results, however, do look quite different from how Google currently displays them).

To convince Google users to try another brand of search, especially from perpetually uncool Microsoft, JWT’s new creative staff will need not only to differentiate Bing from Google, but to find a flaw in Google’s brand armor that can be cracked open.

It’s not impossible.  AdAge reports that Microsoft’s recent “I’m a PC” ads, which directly targeted Apple, have damaged Apple’s value perception among the kind of young adults who buy Macs. But Apple had a conspicuous weakness: High prices during a frightening recession. It’ll be interesting to see how JWT answers the question: What’s Google’s fatal flaw?

[Image from LucasFilm]

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • dm
    I hate Microshaft
  • Gold Leader
    LOL @ the "Death Star exhaust port" briefing.
  • Dolmance
    Me, I wouldn't go with Microsoft under any circumstances. Not after Bill Gates helped get George Bush and a host of Republicans get elected in 2000.

    I'd rather give up using computers than go there.
  • ZZ
    Er...how about making the results useful(?)
  • PRS
    Bingo!
  • huston3
    typical MS question: what's Google's flaw?

    Instead of offering a superior product with a clean interface, they want to figure out how to kneecap the competition.
  • Pal Gor
    Google has no fatal flaw.. Google IS Microsoft. Google offers EVERY product of importance that MS offers but for free. When Google decides that MS must die, Google will connect all of its products together and announce that android is the new OS and MS will start to die 24 hours later.
  • Jack
    And then Google will be everything you hate about Microsoft...Google doesn't do something just to be virtuous, they're out to make money...just like Microsoft and Apple. Linux...perhaps virtuous. Google...wants to be the money maker.
  • virtualdude
    But Google has at least one fundamental difference. They are not scared to make others successful in the process. Microsoft is too greedy and will also attack their partners. History bears this out.
  • William
    Insert examples about how google makes other successful and how Microsoft attacks its partners.

    I would think they both overlap?
  • Darren
    I still don't understand why Mac's come with a one button mouse. I guess it is because Mac users are tards.
  • Johnny
    ?? This is an article about MS vs Google. What are you talking about? This is your one joke about Macs, about the one button mouse? How many times have you made a joke online or in person about the Macintosh one button mouse? You work this gem in every single time anyone says anything at all about computers? You're a "tard," dude. Shut up.
  • Ben Davenport
    The right click and left-click functionality exists, it's just not visually separated like it is on PC mouses...mice..., you know what I mean...
  • not Darren, thank god
    Mac's don't come with a one button mouse any longer (it has 5 buttons on its mice now). Wonder who is the tard? Darren... maybe
  • tp
    rage @ 1998 darren
  • Pal Gor
    All the Google people at TED were drinking afterwards and talking about "the protocol", which is the master plan to wipe-out Microsoft within a 7 day period once they have all of their stuff laid out... they are almost there...
  • TexasToast
    I have my doubts about Bing or Kumo or whatever they call it. google is a powerful brand.

    People love to gravitate to the "goodness" of Google. Uh.. they are a public company with the goal of maximizing profits. People seem to hate Microsoft because they did what their shareholders told them to do.

    I love Microsoft haters. Between Microsoft and Exxon, all the evilness of greedy corporations is manifest.

    Dolmance -- You would be wrong about Bill Gates. He and his company are VERY left leaning and vote democrat most of the time. But its easy to combine the Borg, The Empire with Microsoft.

    Good luck.
  • questiongeek
    Google has something that Microsoft doesn't. That is..a good reputation. When people see the Google brand, they think eco-friendly, green living, community, usefulness, etc...

    When people see the Microsoft brand, they think money hungry greedy corporate sluts, brow beating, ruthless competition, monopoly, popular and functional, but flawed and buggy software dominance.
  • Paul
    Hey, dolmance, nice intelligence quotient.
  • Kevin
    You see Darren, if you want to right click, you just click on the right side of the mouse. If you want to left click, you just click on the left side of the mouse. By the way, there is also a scrolling ball, as well as side buttons that can be customized. I guess the Apple people realized our "tardedness" as tried to make the mouse functional.
  • Sam
    "I hate MS" just isn't cool anymore. Learn to think for yourself. MS has done a lot of changing in the last couple years. I dont know who or what, but things have been shaken up. For example, Silverlight is an amazing product. I dont know if the old MS could have envisioned it. Same with LINQ. Lets see what they come up with their search. The market will decide.
  • tp
    if MS already knows they need 100 million dollars to convince me to try their search, then the ballots are in, their search sucks.

    And BTW: 'i hate ms' is always cool.

    ALWAYS.
  • kgc1
    kgc1 says: Google does have some flaws, like everyone else does, and if Microsoft knows how to expose them in the right way, they could take market share. Fact is, google is a little like opens ource, they will give you just enough to make you pay for more. It's a great marketing concept. Ever downloaded an open source program and find out you need to buy support to figure out where all the bugs are? It happens. Some apps are good to go, but many need an engineer to figure out how to get them to work. Hey stupid-you did'nt donate, so buy support form us, and we'll show you where we planted the bugs or made the typo in the code to get you to donate if you wanted to or not. You should have donated, they are good apps. hey..it's part of our business model..called give it to them free, so they will buy. Buy this and get this free, or get this free and then we force you to buy this. it's a twist on the good deal concept. Am i wrong..in some cases yes..in alot of others...no.
  • CasualReader
    Filter to out 107,875,234 links to work at home scam sites when I search for "telecommute"!
  • Dave
    So... microsoft is trying to get into the more efficient porn results market.
  • linux
    FUCK MICROSOFT, look at the xbox360 and early vista. their just pissinginto the wind with this crap
  • Branden
    lol.. intelligent search results would be the death of google.. I mean seriously its a multi million dollar business to pay people to inflate your google search result... lol.. such a flawed system that there is any influence over it as opposed to true relevence for what you're searching for.
  • Google should buy OpenOffice from Oracle (who got it for free when they bought out Sun -- all they really wanted are Java, Solaris, and MySQL -- they don't care about OpenOffice). They should then improve it, make it faster and improve the UI.

    Then integrate OpenOffice into Google Docs, make sure they are completely compatible format and feature-wise.

    Finally rebrand the whole thing as Google Office, AND offier it to companies as a competitor to MS Office.
  • tp
    i like what this poster has to say.
  • virtualdude
    Except Google's vision is to use a browser for everything and giving people software is another reason to use Windows which defeats Google's effort in changing the paradigm.

    Besides software accessing proprietary APIs is on it's way out. The future is the browser and Web apps that can run on anything, because they are Web standard apps and everything is open.
  • john doe
    "Google offers EVERY product of importance that MS offers but for free. "

    Last time I checked, Google documents can't run VBA (especially vital for any spreadsheet program worth its salt).

    MSFT should watch out though; GOOG has been very active on the political scene and the private sector is more and more public every day...
  • Jamaal
    VBA is a proprietary Microsoft language. Don't confuse it with something that that is necessary for an office suite. The only reason it exists is because Microsoft excludes the programmers of the other 500 computer languages from automating their product through a simple C (or REST or anything but MScode) API.
  • lebron
    these google fanboys have successfully took away any prospect of turning this into an intelligent dialogue...
  • I hear that Google's main CPU is a neural-net processor. To defeat it Microsoft is going to need to send someone forward in time.
  • Jamaal
    ...or backwards in time, in order to protect John Connor.
  • John
    Google has a big flaw. All search has this flaw. Gates talked about it at TED. The flaw is, search sucks. In its current form. Why should we have to hunt through page after page, ten blue links at time?

    The current form of hunting search is so primitive, so archaic. I appreciate Google's algorithms and ranking, but it's a drop in the bucket to accurate relavancy. The question here is, is Microsoft innovating to create a superior search, or just trying and "buy" market share through marketing. Obviously, with a $100M campaign, the answer is clear. Microsoft has little confidence their product will grow organically, and therefore isn't superior. Next.

    Google is the best at the way current search works. But someday, someone out there will come up with a better approach. And like Gates said at TED, we'll all look back at this and wonder how we ever got by without it.
  • dave
    And when that happens, Google will buy out the innovator, or re-create the method themselves, if they weren't the people to develop it in the first place.
  • I've been selling and installing computers since the 70's and making web sites since 1997. I'd say 99% of the time Google page one results are dead on for any of the hundreds of searches I do monthly. Only Google has the experience of weeding out the SEO and SEM Adwhores trying to game their alogo weeding out those whose landing pages suck for the search term or phrase.

    If Microsoft wants to blow 100 million then they should at least have purchase a domain like Get-in2..com (which I'd sell for peanuts) that makes sense. Get-in2 ______ what ever rather then Bing. Hell ... Go.com makes more adsense then Bing.com
  • TC
    To Microsoft, do not be greedy to monopolize all businesses in the world, just like how you thrown Netscape by finding every of their mistake. There is a situation where you should let others to compete with you in order to create more innovative products that is "Totally NEW". You (Microsoft) should have learned your previous mistake from losing to compete with Apple's Ipod where you launched Zune. Therefore, do not waste your time and money for Bing anymore, it would be the same "again" as you wasted money to launch Live previously. Lastly, although I've to admit that there are some flaws in Google, BUT I personally would always prefer all products offered by Google since, nearly all products are free and most importantly they "look friendly" where these terms are not integrated in your products.
  • Microsoft needs something different in search income then trying to beat Google at the game they own. Sell top keyword sub-domains built with content worthy of the price for the "keyword". No hard to see the income from any keyword subdomain at www.get-in2.com as the searcher can skip the pot luck results page and just type in www.get-in2.com/musclecars and go right to a meaningful page.

    That also is the secret for getting a high perminent keyword listing in Google page one results. Forgo writing pages for any SE and write them and place content there for the keyword shopper or searcher, as a legit landing page. Try searching for any general term for "suspenders" or a term like "used step vans" or used Ice Cream trucks and you'll find my sites on all the first pages for years.. No trickery needed. I'm just too old and lazy to give $$Bill Gates a heads up anymore
  • overdue
    Mike, I'm sorry, but I don't think I've ever, EVER typed the term "get in 2" or "get into" preceding a search query.
    "get in 2 banana cake recipe"? I think not.
    Also, I thought a "subdomain" was this:
    www.musclecars.get-in2.com
    and NOT this:
    www.get-in2.com/musclecars
    ?
  • Adam
    Google initially made Checkout available to non-profits. Once all the non-profits invested significant time and money into integrating Checkout to their websites and bank accounts, Google began charging $0.20 + 2% per transaction. Now Google upped the fees as is charging $0.30 + 3% per transaction. $4.7 billion profit isn't enough for Google, they have to take nickels and dimes from charity too, and refuse to let shareholders vote on company direction. Google is just waiting for the right opportunity to exploit users the way Microsoft did in the late 1990s.

    On Microsoft... a big search problem just sitting there Facebook. $100M could create a decent Facebook search. That would be a much better use of money than advertising a Bing search engine that nobody wants.
  • Google App Engine is another point that has to considered. Once Google saw that people want to use the sevices, they have started charging for those using beyond the free quota levels
  • site com estrutura relevante
  • Steve
    Google is a one trick pony. They ride on the back of others works and collect revenue for such. Wolf in sheeps clothing. You Microsoft haters just like to be lied to instead of being told the truth. You mean I have to pay for a product??? morons.
  • virtualdude
    Ha ha. Famous last words. Google will eat Microsoft for dinner. Microsoft is winding down and Google is just getting started.
  • Zumi
    That is what I'm scared of. In ten years time, kids like you will be screaming out Anti-Google slogans at Economic Forums...
  • Jamaal
    and google will deserve it.
  • Bing Bing
    hey microsoft, 100M! must be nice having all that money for overcharging us little people. How about you take that money and have some Ph.D's do research on how your product will fail, and how to pull Zune from the market and stop other bleeding products out of the market. concentrate on products you do well.

    Since Bill didn't finish college, it is now coming back to hunt him. Maybe the reason Google is successful is because its founders did finish college!

    P.S
    Bing Bong, sounds like cheech and chong.
  • overdue
    Back in the 80's, I thought I was "cool," 'cause I was the "first" to get tattooed and and pierced shit; then in the late 90's when everybody was doing it, even suburban moms, I decided, "hmmm," maybe it's not so "underground" anymore.
    Now I look like a square outside, but I still feel "punk inside."

    All these wannabe hipsters with their Macs (nothing against Macs! My wife has one, I use it sometimes....) screaming how "uncool" Microsoft is, I wonder if they have any credibility.
    I though the "cool" thing to do was to be on the outside? And If Mac fanboys claim Google and Mac are the future, i.e status quo, then doesn't that put MS on the outside?
    So does that make me "pre-cool," 'cause soon me and my PC are gonna be in the minority?
  • Bill Gayts
    No.
  • I suppose that pic is implying that MSFT is the Rebellion. If a MSFT employee (or team of employees) actually thought he or she had a great idea for search, why wouldn't they find a way to get out of MSFT and get VC backing for their own companies.

    I am sure there are a lot of ways to beat Google, but I seriously doubt MSFT will own any of them.
  • roy norton
    I'm not one bit jealous of success, go get em Bill !!!
  • Now Google has implemented advertising in their suggestions (when you type in your search) they have gone over the limit.
    Thus if Microsoft has a similar or better search we will switch.

    The idea of search was that people would be able to find themselves, but now advertising is being pushed into the self discovery.

    In 2009 peole don't want to be pushed anymore.
  • Roberto
    Google is just a basic search engine that will die if people start to type 4 letter - Bing, instead of Google 6 letters. That's their flaw.
  • Peter Antypas
    Typing? Who actually types "google.com"? Mozilla has a search box defaulting to Google.
  • Trader Bots
    Anyone else think Chandler Bing when they hear it?

    http://www.traderbots.com