Microsoft Will Open Retail Stores Near Apple Stores in the Fall
On Monday I quoted Robert X. Cingely’s skeptical take in a NYTimes OpEd on the Microsoft/Bing Google/Chrome corporate competition:
This is all heady stuff and good for lots of press, but in the end none of this is likely to make a real difference for either company or, indeed, for consumers. It’s just noise — a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check.
Today John Batelle voiced his disagreement:
I think it’s true that outside of core search and advertising platforms, Google tends to throw a lot of pasta at the wall, in the hopes that some of it will stick. But Google is dead serious about cloud computing, and I very much doubt they’ll abandon Chrome OS. And I’ve spent a fair amount of time with the team behind Bing, and I think Microsoft is equally serious about this effort.
Cringely also said he thought that “the engineering teams for any of these products are, at most, 20 to 30 people.” So Batelle asked Microsoft:
Here’s Microsoft’s official response: “This is inaccurate. The Search and Advertising platform engineering team is in the thousands…(and) We are in the business to succeed long term.”
Now, success doesn’t have to be toppling Google, I think Microsoft would settle for gaining five to ten points of share this year, and continuing to show share gain over the next few years.
On that score, the Bing news today must have been a disappointment. The Big Money’s Chris Thompson:
In comScore’s latest figures, Microsoft’s share of the American search market rose not four percentage points but one-tenth of that, from 8 percent to 8.4 percent. All the buzz, all the talk about how Bing introduced some remarkably convenient new features, all those millions in marketing, pushed Microsoft up just a fraction. Google’s (GOOG) share of the market remained steady at 65 percent, which means that those miniscule Microsoft gains came at the expense of Yahoo and other, smaller search players.
What does this all mean? Short-term numbers like these aren’t exactly predictive, after all. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Vascellaro writes that Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth expected much better numbers for Bing and called the results a “sigh of relief” for Google. Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer announces, “Bing’s first month a bust,” and declares, “Based on this lackluster first month’s showing—and recent survey results suggesting 98 percent of searchers won’t switch to Bing as their primary search engine—there’s little reason to get excited.”
SearchEngineLand has analysis of a J.P. Morgan report finding much the same thing. They note that respondents most liked the relevancy of Bing results (as opposed to the user interface or organization):
On one hand, this is good news for Microsoft that so many people are saying relevance is the best thing Bing has going for it. On the other hand, it also validates Google’s approach all along: relevant results first and foremost, even at the expense of frills and design. And as long as searchers believe Google has the most relevant results, all the new design ideas in the world may not make a difference.
As to Google’s Chrome, Bill Gates says the OS is more of the same. He’s “surprised people are acting like there’s something new.”
Meanwhile, the big Microsoft news today came when Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer, said during his Worldwide Partner Conference keynote that there will be retail stores in the fall. And that they’re going to be right in Apple’s face. A corporate version came later from a Microsoft spokesperson:
“As we progress on our retail strategy there will be scenarios where we have stores in proximity to Apple. We are on track to open stores in the Fall timeframe.
“Beyond that we have no additional details to share.”