businessinsider.com — Steve Ballmer says he is willing to invest 5%-10% of Microsoft's operating income over the next five years on search. That's a boatload of money. Specifically, assuming Microsoft's operating income stays constant (it will likely grow), it's $5.5-$11 billion.
Jun 19, 2009 View in Crawl 4
skwebJun 19, 2009
Search still has tremendous growth potential because content continues to multiply each year. G is pretty good but not perfect. If someone can do it better, they can win/
user78Jun 19, 2009
i think he is nuts, for Microsoft this company is not the company that has run in the past by Bill Gates the man who can make Operating Systems perfect but now that's all gone thanks to Steve Ballmer who has failed with WinME, WinVista and possible Win7, it is time to remove Steve Ballmer and replace with a person who knows and work with Bill Gates in the past so the company can be open more and successful again with positive thinking this time. With this Negative thinking of Steve Ballmer, I am afraid he will lose more than $10 billion dollars or his company!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
esc27Jun 19, 2009
I really hope Bing is successful. Google's effective search monopoly is a very, very dangerous thing no matter how much they chant "don't be evil."
Closed AccountJun 19, 2009
I kind of agree with you; Windows and Office are where they make big money, and they should be spending more time on improving them. Windows 7 solves the dragging maximized windows problem, but oblivinated is correct... if you can't learn the order of window management buttons by now, you've got a problem. Edge resistance is something I can bet most people would find bothersome (I always turn it off in Compiz when I'm working in Ubuntu or the like), but it might be a cool option. I also kind of agree on the multiple desktop support, but I've found that spreading windows around over 4 different screens leads to the "crap, where the hell did I put my window" problem, more than anything else. Remember that this is a consumer OS, designed primarily for people that have a tough time adopting to change - personally, you sound a lot like a Linux user to me...
deslockJun 19, 2009
He's willing to invest 10 billion over five years towards an industry that is valued at over 500 billion?I think people on Digg have no idea how big advertising budgets in general are and no one can argue that print advertising is shrinking and online is growing.What is there to argue about here?
mrmudgeonJun 19, 2009
You have got to hand it to MS. While alot of people talk about long term investments, MS actually does it. If car companies had done that at the height of the car boom, we would not be here today with bailouts to help companies go bankrupt.Personally, Google is and acts like a monopoly, but no more. MS will give them a stiff run and has already taken a chunk out of em. Competition is a good thing.MS spent like 10-11B getting into gaming and now has a solid franchise. MS treats advertisers much better and MS will gain share as their new engine has some interesting stuff. It is much easier for shipping them Googs is.
warpedJun 20, 2009
Yup, just look at the current admistration's bail outs
mweatherJun 20, 2009
You like competition, yet hope the monopoly keeps it's market position?
mtheoryxJun 20, 2009
"Nobody forces you to do so."True. But in many places you will lose your job if you refuse to use the approved applications.
kyloeJun 20, 2009
He's so 'Dumb & Nuts' that it makes me even moRE SO !!ExCiTeD!! YEAH!! <DANCING!>Ahohh yeah... <PHEW!> alright! I just love 'target journalism' soOoOoOo much!!
johnnysoftwareSep 23, 2009
I see no reason why the poster presumes it it likely that Microsoft's revenue will grow in the near future. Their past operating system was not embraced by a huge number of its customers, its web browser is the most archaic and one of the primary conduits for malware into computers, their revenue last period was down not up, they are slashing their head count, and their CEO says he wants to take the company out of the USA.Microsoft paid $3 billion for WebTV. So while $5 billion might seem like a lot of money, when you consider where that $3 billion for WebTV has gone, it is not.Personally, I would like to see them spending a couple of dollars on fixing their software flaws and periodically doing some responsible disclosure to warn the public of flaws before they get hit by zero day exploits. Given that zero-exploitss are not unusual anymore on MS-Windows systems, they need to reorient themselves.Putting a GUI on search is going to slow it down, burn more bandwidth, and subject users to even more zero-day exploit risks. Image files do not exactly have a pristine security record on ANY operating system for the past few years. So right now, a graphical search mode does not make much sense. Companies taking over MS-Windows systems via web content are going to love this.
johnnysoftwareSep 23, 2009
Eleven million dollars of stimulus money went to build walkway to connect Microsoft's campus to a shopping mall on the other side of a highway. Just a few months after that happened, Baltimore has announced that he wants to relocate Microsoft out of the USA. Meaning that $11 million was wasted, if it was not a waste to begin with.Bing is a nicer vector for malware than Google search. When you are just searching on pure text, having images included unbidden can be very bad. If Bing accept graphics adds (image files, video files, Flash, or Shockwave content) well then it is all over. Rich content ads on web sites, especially search sites, are an absolute security nightmare in lots of cases.