Well, as you might have read in yesterday’s 6th article in my Microsoft series, I have recently became a fan of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing and have even started using it as my default search engine, which is a surprise to me even really.. Searching while looking at images such as this one gives a whole other feeling in my opinion:)

Anyway, here are some of the best posts that I had a chance of reading this week on the Blogosphere:

-TheFinancialBlogger discusses 3 tricks to be more productive at work, don’t we all need these??:)
-Microsoft spending $11B on search????
-The Wild Investor discusses the drop of MySpace, which has been interesting especially when evaluating companies such as Facebook & Twitter.
-Should you join debts with your spouse? Read about it from TheCreditToolbox.com
-Funny how some people were angry at China a few years ago and now hoping that it can save GM!
-A review of an interesting book by MDJ: The Seven Rules of Wall Street
-Ideas for father day gifts, and frugal ones:)
-Signs of Recovery: Do We Needs More Stimulus?
-Ever heard of Freeganism??? Neither had I:)
-Recession vacations
-Great question: How much does a NYC bike messenger make???

Search.. A decade ago, search was probably not even considered an industry worth fighting for and with a dozen or so search engines such as Altavista, Lycos, and others, it was wide open. Now, it has evolved into a war of vital importance. The point is that as the world has became more and more digital, being the search engine has became something similar to the sun in our solar system; it is what the entire world web revolves around. And the truth is, after a decade of war between multiple competitors, many now call the competition a “Google monopoly”. No doubt, with a commanding lead in market share, Google has redefined the internet with many websites being built to viewed as best as possible by Google. And with search comes knowledge. No one in the industry comes close to the level of knowledge that Google now has. It can see trends, requests, and even find out where specific health problems originate and a lot more. What does that translate into? Money of course. If someone is buying a book and looking on Google, the company willing to pay up the most money will come out on top of search results, and that is worth a lot of money thanks to millions of searches every second.

Microsoft has been working hard and spending a lot of money trying to get back some market share. It dried revamping its search engine, made a bid to purchase Yahoo, and clearly has not been very successful as it continues to drop market share.. But that could now be changing. Microsoft(MSFT) has made a commitment which even by its standards is quite impressive. It completely changed its search business, renamed it “Bing”, and launched perhaps the most crucial product in a very long time. The search engine is young but has been impressive so far both in terms of capability, look and market share. It is far from being an immediate threat to Google of course, but it has the looks of a possible one. Especially when you consider that Microsoft is planning a budget of several billion dollars per year both for the promotion and improvement of Bing. Can it succeed where no other company has? I think it has a shot, which is more than anyone else has had in a long time. The most surprising is that Microsoft finally got rid of all those ads, links to other Microsoft services, etc that have hurt it for so long and has now gone for a clean design similar to the one Google has been using for years, just a bit cleaner looking in my opinion…!

It certainly looks like Microsoft has viewed the web as a war it cannot afford to lose and that is obviously bad news for Google. Will it succeed? Very difficult to say for now, but it is certainly not lacking the efforts or commitment..

Stay tuned for our conclusion on Monday about the fate of Microsoft…!

In this fourth article, we go towards another segment of Microsoft’s business, the gaming business. Seen as a way to enter a critical business, Microsoft built its entire business to compete with Sony’s Playstation and while it has managed to do just that, it has been outlasted it seems by Nintento’s WII. While Playstation and Xbox focused mainly on the market of gamers, usually young men, Nintendo has successfully made it into the general population targetting women and even young children. This has left both Sony and Microsoft in a bad shape.

The problem of course is that both companies were completely off guard and do not seem close to launching a competitor to the Wii. This also seems to be a problem for Microsoft who has been pulling out hoards of cash to be able to compete in the market. But with Nintendo having its unique platform and Sony using the high definition “Blu-Ray” standard to help its Playstation franchise, it is not quite clear what Microsoft’s angle will be in the next years to better compete.

Just two years ago, Microsoft seemed to finally have figured it out and even got over 50% of market share for a short time period. The problem is that is now falling behind again. Of course, it is not all negative as Microsoft finally was able to generate some profits from its gaming division. And perhaps the one thing that it has a slight advantage on is its XBox live platform that enables users the possbility of competing online, against each other. Competitors do have similar plans/set-ups but it does seem like Microsoft does have an advantage.

The real mesure of success of course will be to determine if Microsoft should change its target audience in the future. If it doesn’t, Nintendo will probably continue to dominate the market and it will be difficult to generate growth as Playstation and Microsoft battle it out in a much smaller market than it once was…

Another major problem is that when Microsoft started getting serious about the gaming industry, it was competing with Sony, which had high prices. The problem with Nintendo’s Wii is also that it is very agressive in its pricing policy. It is not clear that Microsoft would have entered this market if it had known it would be competing with sub 200$ systems such as the Wii. What will be Microsoft’s future in the gaming industry? Will it persevere?? What are your thoughts on the subject??

Google vs Microsoft… hundreds and hundreds of stories have been written about this great rivalry between the two giants, the “Good vs Evil” which Google certainly helped promote when it started promoting its “Do no evil” policy. It started out a long time ago when Google was a much smaller company that did not have power nor influence. Google became one of the main institutes to complain of Microsoft’s excessive use of its operating system monopoly and how it was using its power to illegally prevent innovation and take out competition.

Of course, when it comes to operating systemps, there is no secret, it is Microsoft’s life, its blood and what keeps the company so powerful. And Microsoft has certainly used its monopoly to launch and promote its products. And to this day, there is no true competition to Windows, the operating system used almost everywhere around the world. It is also what makes Microsoft able to pump money into its other ventures. There is no doubt that Microsoft cannot afford to let it slip away…

But things seem to be changing a little in the past few years… First, there was the gradual change in attitude towards “open source”, software that is used and and created by users, not for money. It is generally a lot more flexible and open.

And then, with the growing importance of “mobile”, a new familiar competition emerged as Google launched Android. It is an operating system that can compete with Windows for smartphones. That is worrying enough for Microsoft knowing how Google generally has success with its product launches. And now, news is out that Android will now be used on some smaller capacity computers, which is worrying on so many levels for the empire. Google has a history of offering great products for very low prices and with the high cost of operating systems, there is no doubt that any competition could force Microsoft to lower its prices and/or lose market share.

Of course, for any competition to be considered serious, the operating system would need to be:

-stable
-secure
-cheaper
-compatible with the majority of programs that currently exist

To be certain, the threat to Microsoft Windows is much greater with Android than it has ever been with MacIntosh operating systems and it is not clear what exactly Microsoft can do for now except hope that Google will not be up to the challenge, a strategy that has not proved successful in the past decade.

Another interesting week in the markets as the US$ continues to get pounded which is contributing to the rise of commodities prices, especially oil which is now back in the 70$ range..!

Here are some of the better posts that I read last week:

-TFB presents: How to slow down with your life.. no doubt, this can be useful to anyone…

-TCT presents ways to prevent Identity theft..!

-BMSP presents his weekly review of the markets

-The Wild Investor takes up the subject of Apple’s presence in the corporate world

-Zach writes one of his very good articles: How China could save GM

-MDJ: RRSP Lifelong Learning Plan

-Commodities Trading as Risk and Inflation Hedge

-from FP: Mad about Madoff

-News Corp. faces sincerity test

-What are you teaching your kids about finance?

In my opinion, Microsoft’s dealing of Internet Explorer over the past decade would be one of those classical cases that could be studied in management courses around the world. The situation was ideal for Microsoft. Thanks to its domination of its operating system, it had the “default” browser for most internet users around the world. In this new world, that can be of huge importance. Why? Because a browser gives access to a lot of information and a lot of possibilities in this new bright world.

First off, it seems clear that one of the main reasons why Microsoft lags on the internet is because of its poor understanding of what users are actually looking for. And through a web browser, Microsoft has(had) the possibility of gaining lots of knowledge about where the visitors were going, what they were searching for, etc. As well, in this world where Microsoft is desperate for market share in the search business (more on that next week), having a browser with a search box, as simple as it sounds, means big numbers, and big revenues.

So then, how is it possible that Internet Explorer went from virtually a 95% market share in 2002-2003 to a position where it now lags Mozilla’s Firefox. Simple: Arrogance from Microsoft. Microsoft’s head of Australian operations, Steve Vamos, said in 2004: “We do not see Firefox as a threat, there is not significant demand for the feature set of Firefox among Microsoft’s users^“. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has used Firefox, but has commented that “so much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?”The rival of course has appeal, it is open source, has lots of neat add-ins, is not backed by a powerful evil company (although that could be argued but more on that on a later day). But still, you would think that a web browser could not be improved enough for users to actually want to change. And yet they did, and so the users did. Small changes like adding tabs, a search box, etc made Mozilla a targetted resource.

How is it that it took years and years for Microsoft to adapt its product and at least match most desired and appreciated parts of the Mozilla browser. It seems crazy and yet that is exactly what happened. And if this is what happened with Internet Explorer, there is not that much to prevent a similar pattern to start on both the Office Suite and the Windows operating system. Would it take more time? Absolutely. But you still have to wonder if Microsoft will be more pro-active this time around instead of waiting for its competitors to gain significant momentum.