Will Microsoft Drop Bing?

Microsoft are in for a busy year, by all accounts. Windows is scheduled to have another upgrade, to 8.2. This is eagerly awaited by those who want to stay with Microsoft but don't want to play with the metro interface. The Start button is returning and users will be able to pretend they are on an upgraded Windows 7 environment without ever seeing the metro tiles again. Those tiles will also be capable of being placed on the 'traditional' Windows screen and run like icons. I'm pretty cool with the metro look, but understand why people don't want to change from what they know. In fact, if Microsoft pull this off they will have totally blind-sided Apple with a two faced interface, one for work, one for play, all in one package.

But this isn't even the biggest challenge for Microsoft. They are going to get a new CEO mid year when Steve Ballmer stands down. Apparently they have narrowed the list to twenty candidates. I floated my resume, but I'm guessing I didn't make the shortlist. Some of the candidates are internal departmental chiefs and some are from outside of the company. One who can claim to be a bit of both groups is Stephen Elop, currently deputy CEO of Nokia, the company Microsoft is busy buying.

Elop has played a ballsy game because he has stated he will slay a couple of sacred cows if he gets the gig. Specifically he says he'll sell off XBox and will kill Bing. Seemingly he wants Microsoft to get back to basics, to re-entrench in their core business model. Personally I think he'll have an uphill battle with both ideas, particularly since Ballmer wants both to be ring-fenced. Of course, like all big organisations, his words only carry weight while he's the boss and I'm sure there are hawks and doves in the upper echelons for both products. What I think Elop's doing is ensuring he controls the conversation if he gets called forward, can make his case, concede where necessary and attempt to make the board think he is a leader prepared to make hard decisions.

In the final analysis, do his ideas make sense? Well, unsurprisingly I don't have access to the critical numbers needed to decide if either or both systems deserve to be culled, but I can make an educated guess at the practical issues.

Taking XBox first, it probably soaks up a huge amount of resources and is attempting to make Microsoft look like a viable content provider to challenge iTunes. If it was sold off Microsoft would still reap the Windows spin off advantages without having the operating overheads. But they would lose control over XBox just as it is maturing. XBox will become less of a games console and more of a human to machine interface in the next couple of years and I'm looking forward to that ride. I think selling it now would be a marginal short term gain and a long term loss to the company. Hopefully Microsoft will see sense and keep it.

But Bing is a different problem. I've been consciously using Bing for about six months and can say that generally it is as good as Google most of the time. I don't think it is ever better than Google so by definition it is slightly inferior to the search engine that has become a verb and adjective in most modern languages. It probably costs a shed load of cash to populate and I'm guessing it pulls in a fraction of the revenues that Google gets. However, if Microsoft exits the search engine then the world will be a poorer place. I can still remember the early days of Google when I got the answer to whatever query I made without having to wade through a page of sponsored links. OK, Bing plays the same game, but I think they are more upfront about it, probably because they don't attract as much result skewing investment as Google. If they abandon Bing then there won't be any realistic alternative to Google, who will get ever bigger and more powerful. If only as a market balancing service I hope that Microsoft retain Bing, or maybe they could sell part of it and keep it running at arm's length.

I also hope that everyone reading this blog entry considers using Bing at least once a day out of the many searches you carry out. If you use Internet Explorer you've got a permanent Bing entry box in the top right corner - try it, if only to search for Google. Anyone who has read my blog for a while will know I'm not a big fan of monopolies, and letting Bing go would create the biggest, most influential monopoly this planet has ever seen, one unlikely to be challenged by the likes of the Russian Google, Yandex, for example.

This is going to be a big year for Microsoft. I hope it ends with XBox and Bing intact.

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Microsoft Gets Its Chequebook Out

Apple kicked the App market off when it launched the iPhone.  I think it must have been an interesting day when Steve Jobs walked into the boardroom to make his pitch.  What do you mean, you want to allow independent developers to produce apps for the new device?  You'll be letting anyone make docks, next.

Apple were right to let developers have their head.  Some have made a literal fortune out of the app market, and good luck to them.  Of course Apple knew what they were doing - all the apps had to be sold through the iTunes store and they took a skim off the top.  Millions upon millions of skims later and Apple are a cash rich company.  And those third party docks that meant we had a fantastic choice at next to no risk to Apple - I'm guessing there was a licensing fee involved too.  Talk about win-win.

Now everyone has to compete with Apple for the app market.  The savvy app companies develop their apps for all the successful platforms out there, which means Apple of course plus Android, naturally.  Somewhere out there is also Research In Motion's Blackberry devices, but they are hardly leading the way and developers could be forgiven for not prioritising them.

Microsoft are a little late to the party as well.  Windows 8 is still relatively young, although a few months makes a lot of difference in this modern age.  With the advent of viable smart screen PCs to take advantage of the new OS Microsoft are desperate to start to match Apple in the app market.  It's a tall order, with Apple claiming around 900,000 apps on the iTunes store.  Of course many of them won't have sold many units at all, a bit like eBook titles I guess, while others will have been a runaway success.  To be fair, Microsoft reckon that they have 48 of the top 50 apps in the charts in their store.  But looking at the app store on Windows 8 leaves me a little cold - I'm a hard consumer to please in the games market for example because I'm not too bothered about high resolution multi player games and to be honest all I want is some logic games that don't insult my limited intelligence while I'm waiting for the dentist to call me in.  I haven't found a decent Soduko to match the average fare for free in the Android market yet and Everett Kaser has obstinately said that he has no intention of developing a new version of Sherlock for 'another operating system' until it proves to be viable.

But they want more than that, which is reasonable given they want Windows 8 to be a success, especially in the critical smart phone market.  The mobile market is key to Microsoft's strategy because they are banking on us wanting to take advantage of the functionality in Windows 8 that lets us move seamlessly from mobile phone to PC to Xbox, that is we can start watching a film on one of those devices and pick it up where we left off on any of the other two. They're making grudging progress in the PC market which isn't unexpected - while many of us may choose to run Linux at home, corporately Microsoft is still king.

So the call has gone out to developers that the chequebook is open and Microsoft is prepared to pay up to $100,000 for apps that will run on Windows 8.  It sounds aggressive and as always it will be the small print that will decide if it's worth diverting developer work towards Windows 8, but I'm fairly confident that many operations will be sitting up and taking notice.  It's unclear on how the proportion of $100k is allocated, but definitely worth asking the question, I would suggest. If I was running a development house I'd still prioritise iOS and Android, but I'd have my patent pending Slide Rule app (what do you mean - what's a slide rule?  Don't you use log tables anymore?) running to see if the numbers stack up with the Microsoft offer.  Let's face it, they might not be the richest company in the world anymore, but being third or fourth is still pretty good.  Their credit's good for me.

If you know any app developers, let them know Microsoft are looking for apps and they're in a paying mood.  Maybe I'll develop that Slide Rule app for Windows 8 myself. It can't be any worse than the standard calculator app and might appeal to engineers of, ahem, a certain age.

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Xbox One New Media Giant

When I was at the Gadget Show Live we took a well earned rest in the Microsoft demonstration workshop somewhere near towards the end of the show.  We'd been on our feet for hours and felt the need to sit down and let someone else do all the talking - to be fair, I do go a bit when I'm at one of these bashes.  To be honest, I wanted to see what Windows 8 had to offer - many of the machines on display outside of the Microsoft trade stand didn't have usable software loaded so I couldn't see how it worked with Office, for example.

Anyway, a Microsoft guy pitches up and shows us that he's got a Windows 8 mobile phone, a Dell laptop running Windows 8 and he pointed vaguely in the direction of the right hand side of the stand and declared he had an Xbox over there.  To be fair he could have pointed at any old pile of geek tech nonsense because gaming isn't really my bag.

Then he went on to demonstrate how you can stream a film on one device, stop it and pick up the film on any of the others.  He also showed how you can control the Xbox with the  mobile phone, remotely if needed, so you could set your Xbox to record a programme while travelling home on the train.  He did some gaming things that washed right over me - there's a good reason why I don't have any of those gaming machines at home.  We've got enough tech gear gathering dust without adding any more.  Now I'm not naïve, I can spot a well rehearsed presentation when I see I see one - I've spent many years as a technical and systems instructor myself- and I suspected that there was a suitable amount of smoke and mirrors at play.  To be honest, at one point I was expecting David Copperfield to walk on.

Anyway, as we walked out of the presentation I turned to my wife and mentioned that I didn't know the Xbox was a full media machine and deep inside I thought it could be the way forward, the link between smart TVs, DVRs and downloadable content.  It appears it wasn't an illusion after all.

Microsoft have just released previews of their latest iteration of the Xbox and it seems that gaming, while still a core element of the machine, it isn't the be all and end all of it.  In fact they've made some changes under the hood that has angered a lot of die-hard gamers, moving the processor technology closer to standard PC equipment.  That does mean that it should be easier to port PC games across to the new Xbox, now called Xbox One if you're asking, but apparently there are issues with backwards compatibility.  You've got to hand it to Microsoft, they do have a habit of resurrecting the same old chestnuts every so often - I could be writing about the windows 95 launch and not need to change many of the words here.

But the parts of the new device that interest me is the media aspect.  It looks like Microsoft are pitching this at a new audience and producing a machine that will appeal to those who watch films and TV, listen to music and maybe play the odd game.  To help sell the new version they've built Kinect into the machine instead of having it as an add-on.  This part will not only contribute to interactive gaming but also gives you access to voice commands to control your media watching as well as allowing you to wave your arms around to stop and start recording.  In fact, going back to the demonstration, you should be able to wipe the Windows 8 tiles across your TV set with a wave of an arm, making your TV into a virtual touch screen.

But looking a little deeper it looks like Microsoft are positioning themselves into providing media access, stepping onto the toes of Apple, Amazon including their Lovefilm subsidiary, and Netflix.  Whether they'll tee up a strategic arrangement with one or more of them remains to be seen, but going back to that Windows 95 period I would suggest that any such strategic alignment is likely to end in tears for whoever signs up with Microsoft.

So Windows 8 isn't just a new operating system, it's a paradigm change.  Instead of having a separate instantiation of the OS on each machine you own, acting independently to all other instances, they all work together.  You log in using your Microsoft login and you access anything you have legitimate access to on any Windows machine you are logged on to.  I can't comment on how this new Xbox looks like to the gaming world - and I'm aware there are a few unhappy bunnies out there - it certainly looks interesting to those of us who use other forms of media.  One to watch.


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