When you ask people what they use to search on the web with the answer invariably will be Google. In fact with some folks Google is the Internet as this is the installed browser’s default start page for many computers sold these days. With the largest market share in the search field where even a percentage point can mean billions of dollars it is easy to understand why companies are doing what they can to get even the smallest slice of the pie.

Primary amongst all these companies is Microsoft with their Live.com service and their MSN service which are their main forays into the search engine jungle. The problem is that next to no-one knows they are even in the game to begin with. For most you mention MSN and they think their email or some such thing as this is yet another of the company’s brands that has no identity. Then you switch to talking about Live Services and people give you a blank look.

As Kip Kniskern over at LiveSide said today in a post

… relating these tidbits to Live Search, we begin to see the problems Microsoft is facing.  Live Search hasn’t “raised the bar” up to this point, in fact it has struggled mightily to reach the bar that others have set.  Microsoft has been overly worried about trying to control the conversation, and not worried enough about “walking the walk”.  It hasn’t been consistent, and in fact isn’t up until this very day, when it can’t get behind a brand and get on with it.  The real problem with the Live Search brand isn’t the name or the logo, it’s that what the logo stands for hasn’t been defined, and frankly hasn’t been very good.

While Kip is being nice when suggesting that Live Search hasn’t raised the bar I would suggest that they don’t even know where the bar is or what the bar looks like. From the market place point of view it is a product that is dead in the water and seen by some as to be circling the bowl.

I wrote a post a while back where I suggested that Microsoft needed to really rethink their whole strategy around their search to the point of starting a skunkworks project that would be much like the old start.com project. My points raised then are just as valid now

- a small core group of developers – no big multi dimensional teams

- keep the project away from the marketers and lawyers

- come up with a verb name but not one of these stupid Web 2.0 type ones

- UI team come up with simple interface and I mean simple – K.I.S.S. to the extreme

- stay away from the main tech blogosphere for at least 6 months

- when project is ready for live testing tell the MS marketing arm to piss off and head to the colleges. Get the students involved – listen to them. Not just about results but also the coolness .. the look .. the name .. and most importantly how they integrate it into their language.

The most important thing to remember is as I said in that post

This is not the marketplace of early adopters, or the bloggers, or of the marketers. No - search is the interface - the new language - of the people. All of the people.

As long as Microsoft keeps trying to throw things against the Live wall to see what sticks then they are going to go nowhere and Google will continue to dominate in search.

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