It is no secret that Microsoft and Google hold no love for each other. Over the last few days I noticed increased amount of Microsoft's '
' finger pointing at Google. Personally I find the use of 'mudslinging' tactics highly distasteful, often reserved for shady politicians. If Microsoft is the new champion of exemplary business ethics, then may I suggest that they look at their own boardroom first?
The entire altruistic campaign to bring Google to justice was spearheaded by Tom Rubin, senior Microsoft lawyer. Actions like this often result in a flurry of lawsuits. To me this is simply a brilliant tactic executed by lawyers, to further strengthen the preponderance of lawyers in the business world.
I don't know what will be the outcome of the latest salvo in the Microsoft vs. Google rumble, but according to the latest
numbers from comScore Microsoft's search market share has slipped by 0.5% down to 10.5%. Parallel the slip in rankings with the
latest news of Chris Payne, corporate vice president of Windows Live search, leaving Windows Live Search to start up his own business.
With the shrinking peace of the search market share, Microsoft should focus on adopting the 'innovate, innovate, innovate' business model of Google, where there is continuous development of tools and applications, the ones that gain traction are moved forward while others get scraped. To me this tactic appears to hold higher chance of success and market share gain over the current smearing campaigns.
I hope that Microsoft is not a company where user-centricity has simply became a corporate cliche, you know, one of those empowering slogans that are being fed to us during business meetings, but all to often it ends there because implementing it is to conflicting with the corporate agenda.
My friend Jody Nimetz has written an insightful article proposing that perhaps when all the dust settles down,
Yahoo! might be the biggest winner.
I guess time will tell.
Tom Abramowski
Organic Search Marketing Strategist
Search Engine Positioning by Searchengineposition
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