Tonight Dave posted his thoughts on Microsoft’s botched search engine rollout:
Was there any reason at all for us to come to the briefing? There’s no difference between what we said to you four weeks ago and what the public is saying about the product now. We didn’t need to come from all over the world to give you our view of what you were doing, because you didn’t use any of the ideas and feedback we provided. It might make sense if we had just suggested minor tweaks, but that’s not what happened, and now everyone else is saying exactly the same things we said. What a waste of all our time. What a case study in organizational incompetence.
Now what would be amazing is if you regrouped and LEARNED from this, and let’s get some killer features into this product, things that really disrupt the market and get people thinking that search engines could be much more than they are today. We talked about them, and for now I’m going to do you a favor and not talk about them publicly.
But before you can disrupt the market you yourselves need some disruption.
Dave are you really that surprised. Microsoft is a thousand tornadoes deep. Real disruption will not come from within, no more than it is from Google right now–especially with blogging. I wouldn’t worry to much about a search monopoly right now, but disruption is going to come from someplace other than Microsoft.