Down at the Googleplex in Mountain View this morning to hear Google’s Marissa Mayer (pictured) talk about the state of search.

You have to feel for Bill Gates and Kevin Johnson, the man with the unenviable job of trying to prove that Microsoft can at least play on the same field as Google. Gates is scheduled to present Microsoft’s latest advances in search this Wednesday at an event that the company has been touting heavily. Johnson, in an email to employees yesterday, promised big news:

We will be announcing a major new initiative that our search teams have been driving. We are getting better and better with our core algorithmic search, and at the same time, we are investing to differentiate in vertical experiences and to disrupt the current model.

So there looks like more than a touch of competitive rivalry in Google’s last-minute decision to throw a “Factory Tour” to talk about the latest and greatest ideas from its own search business (more on that later as the day unfolds.)

This was Johnson’s admission in an email to Microsoft employees on Sunday:

 The fact is that we are not where we want to be in this business yet and we’ve been in this position longer than we’d like.

With Microsoft making new overtures to Yahoo over the weekend and Google strutting its stuff so publicly, it’s hard to see what Gates can possibly do this week to convince the world that Microsoft can truly succeed under its own steam in this business.

May 19th, 2008 in Digital media, Internet, Media, Tech Finance | Permalink