Personally, I'd like to see someone
other than MSN, Google, or Yahoo! become a player in all of this. My darkhorse heart and money were on All the Web before the buyout; they really did have a great engine going. They still do, but it's not quite the same as it once was.
Anyway, I digress. On to my own thoughts on Microsoft's game plan:
First of all, I don't think that MS "bullies" users into buying new versions of software simply by withdrawing support for older versions. Companies do that all the time, as software becomes old or obsolete.
Quick, everyone who downloaded a patch released for WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS that was created in the last month raise your hands. Now, let's count the hands...ummm...er...0. Why? Because it's not cost-effective for the Corel corporation to keep supporting the software long after its expiry date has been reached.
Second, this is not the "end" for Google, but it will put search on a much more level playing field than it has been, which is way overdue. MSN's already made some significant improvements to their engine just by dropping Looksmart. The results for many keywords and phrases appear similar, if not exactly the same, across the board with most other engines.
Google, on the other hand, continues to bend over and stick its head between its legs for a self-examination of its own colon by constantly updating the algorithm and allowing more and more topically irrelevant results and obvious unethical manipulations in. Take this for example:
http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid...=I90+Ringtones
So yeah, I'm all for what they're doing and I expect that when they tie offline and online search together, that will really raise the bar and force companies like Google to lift their heads back up above their shoulders and really look at what's going on.
I see Microsoft dominating this market, but I also see it being smaller than everyone expects. Due to privacy issues and general resistance to technology among average users and the excessively paranoid, use of this technology will likely take 5-10 years to really take off, if it does at all.
It's a good thing to know about, but I'm not going to alter any of my marketing strategies to focus on it anytime soon.