February 6, 2008
Microsoft to rejig its online team (again)
Steve Berkowitz, once billed as a saviour for Microsoft’s internet business, has made little impact since he arrived two years ago, so it’s not surprising that he now looks to be on the way out. It seems that bringing in senior outside talent, something Microsoft has shown itself increasingly willing to do, has not always gone smoothly.
CNET is reporting that Berkowitz, once the head of Ask.com, is going as part of a reorganisation that will also involve the departure of Mike Sievert, a former AT&T executive. We can’t confirm all the details of that report, but the conversations we’ve had suggest that Berkowitz won’t be around too much longer.
A consumer marketing expert who really made his name in the publishing industry with the "For Dummies" series of self-help books, Berkowitz was meant to bring a dose of marketing and brand-building pizazz to Microsoft’s floundering online operations.
It looked like a tall order from the start. When we met him several months into his assignment he was already sounding frustrated at trying to bring order to a messy portfolio that mixed pure online brands like MSN and Live with older names like Windows and Office - not to mention navigating the Redmond bureaucracy. Maybe one day soon all those branding nightmares will be over and it will all just be called Yahoo.











The coda to your blog article might indeed be the denouement to many of Microsoft’s online services, such as MSN. Office Live might have a better chance of survival because it offers businesses Web-service applications that businesses and other organizations can use. And I don’t see anything by Yahoo that duplicates it. On the other hand, if Microsoft buys Yahoo, there seems no rationale for preserving MSN over the long-term. It would probably only make sense to keep it on life support for the duration that it takes to migrate everyone over to Yahoo.
Posted by: Tom Donohue, NewsVisual | February 8th, 2008 at 12:45 am | Report this commentI think it might be called yahmic! once yahoo and microsoft merges.
Posted by: J. Burroughs | February 9th, 2008 at 4:45 am | Report this commentI think it’s just an attempt (from MSFT) for staying in the web-business, which is currently dominated by others than YHOO and MSFT.
Posted by: Flo Dogar | February 9th, 2008 at 11:34 pm | Report this commentWhat I think might be a good idea is developing MSFT software with the power of YUI, which would probably be very well received, specially in business or customer management software (RIA’s).
On the other hand, i’m not quite sure that it’s not just a panicking Steve Ballmer, who should be more like the other Steve…