@Fat Guppy – Haha… somehow I got the feeling that you were going to leave a comment here. Welcome back from your vacation!

I don’t find the analogy odd at all.

No one is claiming that the browser industry == search industry, so your descriptions of the two is irrelevant.

The analogy is simply that in both “industries” (a term I’ll use loosely), there is a supremely dominant incumbent, and a bunch of smaller players are trying to punch through and gain market share in a significant way.

Firefox was able to do that in the browser space, but no one is able to do that (yet) in the search space.

One can argue that Yahoo at 13% share is still significant, but if you remember that Yahoo was once upon a time in Google’s enviable position way before Google was conceived and that shines a whole different light on the direction that they have been heading for the past decade.

Microsoft > Google in certain areas, just like Google > Microsoft in other areas, and just like believe it or not, IBM > both Google and Microsoft in yet other areas.

Regarding IE: I meant to say that MS got complacent and basically ignored IE for many years once version 6 shipped. It wasn’t until when Mozilla/Firefox became a serious threat (around 2004?) that MS buckled up and started putting money back into IE instead. I don’t think anyone rational will dispute this.

Anyway, Microsoft was not even the main point of my article. And at 7.9% share, Live.com still has a ways to go to become relevant in any search engine competition discussion with Google. Not saying that it can’t be done, but it sure will be an uphill battle.

FireFox is a browser, something individual and used by many individuals. I myself use 3 browser brands. MSIE 7/8/Mobile, FireFox and Opera Mobile. How many browsers can you use ? FEW. How many computers you need to run a browser ? 1

Whereas Internet Search is a web application and one of many many web applications out there. Unlike browsers, I use a huge list of search engines and other web applications. How many web appls can you use ? Tremendous ! How many computers you need to run a web app? Many ! Thousands of servers.

Therefore the analogy is wrong. Secondly Google is more than Search. Microsoft is more than Google.

Internet Explorer is not dead. MSIE 8 should be out of beta soon and it will support more open browser standards (in fact better than FireFox from what I know…) Lack of plugins compared to FF ? What ? There are so many. But I need just one. http://www.ie7pro.com/

You should know by now, the more plugins you dump in FireFox, the slower it crawls and the problems there is. So much for choice.

Microsoft is not stupid enough to compete with Google for the sake of it. A STC is not cheap to host in any country. Unlike Google, Microsoft serves more Enterprise Customers which have really tough expectations and requirements. A STC goes way beyond just Search for Enterprises.

Oops… I shall not say too much !

Mark