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Seriously, I'm not really obsessed with Microsoft! I think they are verging on irrelevance! This sad bloated corporation is still fighting 20th century wars with 20th century technology (Psst! update: We are now in the 21st Century -- but don't tell the brains trust at Redmond!).
But after the revelations surrounding the Live Search Cashback initiative and the vast quantity of bovine faeces distributed by so-called online technology journalists, I have to add my own two bob's worth.
Contrary to the rubbish widely disseminated on the Internet, Live Search Cashback is not a brilliant strategy! Nor is it a case of the "The Empire Strikes Back!" as some silly journalists have proclaimed. It is sheer desperation! Not content with bleeding to death slowly, Microsoft have now decided to open their veins completely, and demonstrate to the rather disinterested public how much of their own lifeblood they can spill before the pallor of cash deprivation immobilises them and drives them out of the online search market altogether.
The desperate idea of giving away money to consumers as a possible means of gaining market share will eventually cause concern amongst the bean-counters in Redmond's central money bin. The one thing the geniuses, who came up with this idea, forgot was the important three R's of search. And here, I will enumerate all three important principles. They are:
- Relevance.
- Relevance.
- Relevance.
That's right folks! If you are in the search business, irrelevant results mean death! And it doesn't matter how much money you give away to online users! If your search results are not relevant, you don't increase your market share. And consequently, you slowly bleed to death. Whether or not you choose to increase the amount of blood you spill (as Microsoft has) does nothing to make the search more effective. It just hastens the rate at which you bleed.
Oh! And how do you get relevant results?.
With powerful, lean, mean, open source search engines.