“This year, for example, Microsoft will invest $6.8 billion

[globalhostinggroup]

“This year, for example, Microsoft will invest $6.8 billion in research and development” Bill Gates

I have bean looking at Microsoft’s announcement to take on the search engine market. With bill gates quoting to say “This year, for example, Microsoft will invest $6.8 billion in research and development” what percentage of that will go into this new project?
If you look at googles worth http://www.10e20webdesign.com/news_c...google_ipo.htm

http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/26/news...ters/index.htm

is it possible that Microsoft will spend 10x over googles value in R&D alone is this not clear signs of the product they will produce?

[robinev]

Microsoft isn't foolish enough to spend that whole R&D bundle on search alone.

As you can see from their own public lists, they are engaged in a number of other expensive projects.

I suspect one would have to be a very good financial analyst to even make a good guess about how much they're spending on search.

Microsoft's classic approach is to assign something like this to a number of separate and competing groups in different divisions. There are internal winners and internal losers in these Redmond races. I'm sure Office, Windows, MSN are all working on project that might eventually be folded into the search projects that Research has developed. But I also suspect that much of what folks in those groups are working on will never see the light of day. That's the nature of their process.

[Dave Hawley]

“This year, for example, Microsoft will invest $6.8 billion in research and development”

Is that up/down from other years?

I must say though, I very much like Google's individuality and their refusal to automatically take the same road as those before them. I think Google still has some aces up it's sleeve.

[robinev]

Originally Posted by Dave Hawley

I think Google still has some aces up it's sleeve.

I agree, Dave. I think this will turn into an intriguing and ultimately beneficial competition. I, too, admire what Google has done and the way they've done it. They've made mistakes along the way, but that's part of the nature of the task.

One indication that Google is ready to compete head-on with Microsoft or anyone else is a recent small purchase made by the Californians. Google reportedly purchased an image-indexing application. There are dozens of those things out there and Google's would be insignificance but for one thing: It gives Google a desktop search client to add to their email search client and so much else.

[globalhostinggroup]

My point is not that Microsoft will spend the whole budget, it is that even a small fraction of their R&D out weighs Google worth. So looking at it from a point of investment against return I think their will be some major changes. I’m not saying Google will disappear what I am saying is Microsoft is about to raise the bar and everyone will have to fallow suite or surpass them.

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by globalhostinggroup

what I am saying is Microsoft is about to raise the bar and everyone will have to fallow suite or surpass them

I don't think Micorsoft's history is as much about "raising the bar" as it is about leaving the bar where it is and packaging it and promoting it in a way which grabs consumer's attention and confidence.

That's worked very well for DOS and Windows, Basic -> Compiler Basic -> Visual Basic -> >NET, etc., but less well, so far, for internet technologies. Microsoft does what it does very well indeed, better than anyone else, and that's why they're #1 for what they do. But they are neither infallible nor unbeatable.

They can potentially give Google some real competition and that's a good thing - I don't expect to see MS knock Google out of the water though.

[Luggage]

Originally Posted by minstrel

I don't think Micorsoft's history is as much about "raising the bar" as it is about leaving the bar where it is and packaging it and promoting it in a way which grabs consumer's attention and confidence.

I've never felt confident in any product microsoft has released unless they've bought it off another company. Their version 1 of anything tends to be extremely bad.

Dos had control of the market basically because of deals with clone manufacturers. When windows 3.0 came out they gained a huge advantage because they kept certain parts of it secret giving their own software (ie word) a huge advantage over competing products.

From what I've seen they make a habit of running competitors out of the market by flooding it with cheap or free software until they have a huge market share at which point they can set their own price without any fear of competition.

Their internet strategy basically failed, in my view, because like everything else they want to own and control it without competition. If they get serious about search engines, google won't stand a chance.

After all, they own the browser market now and a new standard or a 'bug' in ie that made google not work quite right could effectively kill them. If they did something that was illegal and google took them to court, by the time it was over google would essentially be dead regardless of the outcome.

After saying that though, they'll probably just buy google and redirect people to msn. ;)

[rex_b]

Why would they spend more than google rather than just acquire google.

If you can't beat them, buy them.

[TrafficProducer]

Invest $6.8 billion, loose change to Microsoft.

In the UK it's common to invest money so the Tax people can't get it.

[ellenthompson]

I'm SURE MS tried to buy Google, but Google's mgmt was able to cash out for more in the open market because there is an eager market for their stock. This is the same reason so many people went public in the .com era - it was the best way to raise capital and pay out investors.

I am not a financial person, but according to the press, the Google valuation at about $120+ per share as announced today was 36 billion, which would make the MS investment 1/6, not 10 times the valuation. According to MSNBC, they are raising 3.3 billion, at a valuation of 36 billion, which means they are only selling 10% of outstanding shares. This gives them plenty of room to sell more shares later and raise more cash later.

By the way, if you are wondering of what other companies have similar valuation, Amazon has a current valuation of about 37 billion.

MS has won (Netscape) and lost (Quicken) a lot of battles and whether they can beat Google will be seen soon enough. But I fear both them both enough not to go on record with my opinion and URL in one place!

[Dave Hawley]

From what I've seen they make a habit of running competitors out of the market by flooding it with cheap or free software until they have a huge market share at which point they can set their own price without any fear of competition.

Agree! However, this is just one area Google have been very prudent in. They have, since day one, freely deeped crawled the www. No other SE, as yet, can do this as deep or as fast as Google. This of course gives them the biggest and freshest database in the world. Their algo, that then ranks these pages, is also arguably the best in the world.

Basically, Google are already doing it all for free! Even MS will struggle to make ppc free :)

[zbatia]

Their new operating system will be "a la Google" for inside and outside universal searches across the hard drives/local network/ extranet/ web. Unless Google will create something unique quickly, M$soft will "kill" it the same way as it "killed" Netscape.
Just my 2c.

[vivekkedia]

Hi

Google being killed by M$ is really scary , what will we get the blue screen of death when we search for something ...........


vivek kedia
http://www.grmtech.com

Originally Posted by zbatia

Their new operating system will be "a la Google" for inside and outside universal searches across the hard drives/local network/ extranet/ web. Unless Google will create something unique quickly, M$soft will "kill" it the same way as it "killed" Netscape.
Just my 2c.

[Dave Hawley]

Unless Google will create something unique quickly, M$soft will "kill" it the same way as it "killed" Netscape.

Didn't they kill it by making it free? See my post above Mon Jul 26, 2004 10:31 pm.

[globalhostinggroup]

Quote:
Why would they spend more than Google rather
than just acquire Google.

Google was not that much more noticeable better that any of the other search engine remember no SE has a total majority share so there is need for improvement.



Quote:
I am not a financial person, but according to
the press, the Google valuation at about $120+
per share as announced today was 36 billion,
which would make the MS investment 1/6, not 10
times the valuation. According to MSNBC, they
are raising 3.3 billion, at a valuation of 36
billion, which means they are only selling 10%
of outstanding shares. This gives them plenty
of room to sell more shares later and raise
more cash later.

The selling price of stock does not always reflect the value of the companies. And a companies value does not always reflect how much it costs to reproduce or surpass the current company.
The fact is that from conception to the combined value of all their servers and all the hours that went into Google you would be hard pressed to even touch a fraction of 6.8 billion



Quote:
Basically, Google are already doing it all for
free! Even MS will struggle to make ppc free :)

Google is not free it is played for by advertising and private search services if these though things did not exist then do you think anyone would buy their stock.



msn advanced search page is already looking better there are quite a few options, still nothing groundbreaking but this is what we have to wait for.
Don’t forget Google was discussing releasing user free online (Microsoft type)programs this comment MS could have taken quiet seriously so I thin their will be much more to this.

[S e t c o r p]

Other than the R & D apparent contribution towards search engine resulting compilations,,,, where else can this money go... better yet - where should it go considering the level of computer savvy that the general population seems to thrive upon....

[zbatia]

Quote: Didn't they kill it by making it free? See my post above Mon Jul 26, 2004 10:31 pm.

Dave,
This Google's "free" cost us $500-$800/month.
There is nothing that M$soft cannot re-create, improve, and then kill the compatitors including crawling WWW. Recall the Novell's directory services, the best in the world. So, where is Novell now? Nobody even remember their great NDS, but only Microsoft's AD.

[Dave Hawley]

You are missing the point. Even MS cannot make ppc (AdWords fo Google) free. I doubt they could even improve it and/or make it cheaper. Google AdWords is the cheapest ppc of all the biggies (min bid that is).

IMO, the main reason Google are so popular is that they, from day 1, freely deep crawled the Web. They have then used their database (largest freshest in the world) to return the most relevant results. I doubt MS cannot improve on this either.

The one area MS could get a big edge is marketting. However, I feel they are a few years to late to take this advantage. Google is already a household name.

My money is on Google as the winner in the SE wars.

[zbatia]

Time will show, my friend... ;-)

[globalhostinggroup]

You are missing the point. Even MS cannot make
ppc (AdWords fo Google) free. I doubt they
could even improve it and/or make it cheaper.
Google AdWords is the cheapest ppc of all the
biggies (min bid that is).

MS could make PPC adds free but this raises anti trust issues again. But you can believe they will bring it in at a competitive rate.

Min bid is a joke of any preferred term and they are not the cheapest other 3rd party companies charge less. I think you are comparing the min .08 to overtures min .10 but overture has a larger market share as a total then Google so it costs more.

IMO, the main reason Google are so popular is
that they, from day 1, freely deep crawled the
Web. They have then used their database
(largest freshest in the world) to return the
most relevant results. I doubt MS cannot
improve on this either.

Do you not think MS has the capital to go 10 fold over Google systems without even blinking. And if you do not think there is not room for major improvement in internet searching ask yourself why no one has locked out the competition. Everything you search do you get what you are looking for and see only relevant sites. Do you think that we as a people with our vast knowledge just cant do better. There is always room for improvement and it happens weather people like it or not.

This does not mean Google cannot compete they will make lots of money off their stock and they can get more money from the bank they can generate the capital to fight MS. But any way you look at it things will change.

Everyone thought MS making a game system would be stupid and that they could not touch Sony. As Sony loses it’s exclusive contracts 1 by 1 and more and more people switch to the better system we see the difference.
MS released a game concel that out performed the PS2 hands down the rest is just software.

[Dave Hawley]

MS could make PPC adds free but this raises anti trust issues again. But you can believe they will bring it in at a competitive rate.

Make ppc free??? I don't think so, it's an impossibility. If they do, who goes on top?

Min bid is a joke of any preferred term and they are not the cheapest other 3rd party companies charge less. I think you are comparing the min .08 to overtures min .10 but overture has a larger market share as a total then Google so it costs more.

You are wrong here. I Also clearly stated "cheapest ppc of all the biggies". Min bid works very well when you know how to use AdWords effectively.

Do you not think MS has the capital to go 10 fold over Google systems without even blinking.

Huh? How would they "go 10 fold over Google systems" Don't even know what you mean.

And if you do not think there is not room for major improvement in internet searching ask yourself why no one has locked out the competition

.
Sorry, I can make no sense of this statement either

Everything you search do you get what you are looking for and see only relevant sites. Do you think that we as a people with our vast knowledge just cant do better. There is always room for improvement and it happens weather people like it or not

I never said there was no room for improvement, I just don't think MS will do much in this way when compared with Google.

Everyone thought MS making a game system would be stupid and that they could not touch Sony. As Sony loses it’s exclusive contracts 1 by 1 and more and more people switch to the better system we see the difference. MS released a game concel that out performed the PS2 hands down the rest is just software

Funny how only MS success stories get bandied about :) Isn't Sony still #1 in this market?

You have to realize that all other areas MS have moved into they have made the product so cheap/free that others simply cannot compete. I think you will find this will end up being another one of those MS losses we never hear about :)