You Can Still Learn Stuff From Microsoft

I leave all things philosophical to the professionals and my best friend. The good or evil debate that is Microsoft? Best handled by others.

But from a Start-Up perspective, you can learn from MSFT every now and then.

Change the Rules:

When you are getting your ass kicked and you've exhausted your normal 3x then get it right strategy, change the rules. That would be what Microsoft is doing with Bing, the decision engine. Not a search engine but a decision engine. You make it your default 'decision engine' not your default 'search engine.' At CES, wandering the Microsoft and the special BingLand exhibit, I tried an experiment after seeing some of the ads for Bing. I went up to 10 different Microsoft employees and played the role of knob trade show attendee. It was easy, I was myself. I walked up and asked the obnoxious "How is Bing a better search engine than Google?" Ten out of Ten: Google is a good search engine, we are an amazing decision engine. Or a slight variation. Then, got a demo targeted at a decision I'm likely to want to make when I type into the box. Brilliant (and about phreakin time). I watched others around me nod with acceptance of the Microsoft answer and demo. I watched others come up, ask a variation of my knob question and get a solid, non-arrogant, helpful, relevant answers.

Lesson here for you: Either read the Blue Ocean book, or simply change the rules so you are in a category of one. It will be interesting to watch the market share numbers.

[Note: This isn't a debate on Bing vs. Google, just an observation on strategy]

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Comments

[Danial Jameel]

I do agree that the Bing team is trying really hard and have some cool features. Definitely different than the same old MS stuff. Windows 7 was also another pleasant surprise :) However Hotmail and it blocking our accounts recently without any warning (I have been using it since a early high school!)not cool, not cool at all! I totally Ranted on this one http://bit.ly/7koS7B :S (I just don't get why they would do something so silly at this time).