Binging on excuses
The trial between the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Google has commenced, and both parties have begun calling their respective witnesses. One of those witnesses called by the DoJ’s, was one Mr. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft. Here's how the media covered the event:
Fortune: “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Monday that unfair tactics used by Google led to its dominance as a search engine, tactics that in turn have thwarted his company’s rival program, Bing.”
The New York Times: “In more than three and a half hours of testimony in federal court in Washington, Mr. Nadella was often direct and sometimes combative as he laid out how Microsoft could not overcome Google’s use of multibillion-dollar deals to be the default search engine on smartphones and web browsers."
Windows Central: “Nadella indicated he was willing to part with up to $15 billion annually to attract the deal with Apple, citing that it would be game-changing for the company.”
After reviewing the aforementioned articles and many others that you could find using a Google search, it becomes evident that Microsoft made significant efforts to get into the search game, but just couldn't make it. And now, the DoJ is calling its CEO to support its case.
Conveniently, there was no mention of Microsoft's past anti-competitive tactics. You might recall the saying, "DOS Isn’t Done Until Lotus Won’t Run," or IBM's endeavor to reclaim the PC market from Microsoft by launching its own operating system, OS2. OS2 had the capability to run Windows in a virtual mode, yet it faced consistent compatibility issues following each Microsoft update.
I've described Microsoft's modus operandi in one of my past posts: “Microsoft is always coming from behind where it feels its competitive advantage or almost monopoly is threatened. That happened with browsers, that happened with search, that happened with cloud.”
Microsoft is rarely winning the market with better products. It wants to buy its way into the market. It tried with Zune, it tried with Nokia and Skype, to name a few.
Also if you read these articles, you notice that Mr. Nadella is not disputing the quality of Google's product. He’s only showing his frustration at how unfair the market is that - as an example - Apple wouldn't make Bing the default search engine.
This is what we can see in public. The question is what the real strategy is for Bing. What is the vision? Is it the 'second best search engine on the web?' or 'The search which keeps searching?'
Here is the snippet from Microsoft blog post from 2019, celebrating its 10 years: “As we pause and take a moment to reflect on the past ten years, we thank you, our advertisers, for helping to make Bing a success. From the beginning, Bing’s mission has been to empower people through knowledge, and together we've brought that mission to life by helping to bring brands and people closer together through meaningful connections that are trusted, intelligent and empowering.
We’re building on a decade of success leading with Bing. We credit our fans and advertisers for helping us reach these milestones: 100 months of consecutive Bing share growth, half a million advertisers with access to more than half a billion consumers. While we've changed our name to Microsoft Advertising, Bing remains the consumer search brand in our portfolio, and will only become more important as intent data drives more personalization and product innovation.”
That my dear reader is a post from a multi-billion dollar company. Pathetic.
Even worse is the post from 2013 which starts with “At Bing our central mission is to help you search less and do more. To that end, we’re constantly looking for ways to make your search experience more efficient. One of the central ways we do this is by better understanding what you are trying to get done and removing clicks and navigation that might stand in the way. With that in mind, we’re introducing a new product search experience that does just that.”
I think that one of Microsoft's objectives was fully met: “...our central mission is to help you search less...”
Imagine, you have $15 billion to spend on product promotion and instead you would spend it on product improvement. What would Bing look like with that kind of budget? But no amount of money can fix a product where the vision for the product doesn't exist, or where there’s no strategy to execute on. The only thing we get to see is the CEO complaining about how unfair Google is.
The recurrent pattern? Focus on the strategy. Define what winning looks like, where your market is and how to win in that market. That will help you to define the required capabilities of your product or offering; and you will know what to build. Somehow Microsoft never got that right with Bing.