It has been a consistent refrain from Microsoft execs over the years that internet search can be made much better. Users spend a lot of time fishing randomly through unrelated pages for the information they want (true) and often come away empty-handed (also true).
But trying to beat Google by building a better mousetrap will be incredibly hard. Microsoft is about to start internal trials on a new search service (Kara Swisher has an internal email describing the effort). There are two reasons why this will probably fail to change the competitive position with Google.
One is that advances in relevance are very difficult for internet users these days to perceive. Google achieved a once-in-a-lifetime advance at the start of this decade mainly because other companies had taken their eye off the ball: search had been dismissed as a commodity service that would never make any money.
Google proved that was wrong, and for a generation of internet users the happy surprise that came from conducting that first Google search was so powerful that it will leave a permanent halo around the company’s brand.
In a far more competitive market, future search improvements will be incremental and often barely noticed by users. Through the purchase last year of semantic search pioneer Powerset, Microsoft has been hoping to get a technological leg-up on Google, but it’s hard to see this making a noticeable difference.
A second possible source of differentiation in search is the user interface. As the Microsoft memo suggests, the company plans to try out a few new ideas in this department.
The trouble is, users have failed to respond before to tools like clustering, which should make it easier to refine search results (just look at Ask.com, which has come up with a number of true innovations over the years but failed to increase its market share one jot).
There is still a powerful allure to that single magic search box, with its promise of answering whatever you want to know.
So how could Microsoft set itself apart? One good place to start would be more powerful branding and marketing – something that Microsoft has been woefully bad at in the past. Creating a strong emotional connection with users is essential, and the Microsoft and Windows names just don’t cut it.
According to Ina Fried at Cnet, Microsoft may rebrand its search service as Kumo – the name being given to the latest internal trial. Microsoft has been playing that possibility down and suggesting that no decision has been taken, but it might be a good place to start.
