Microsoft Acknowledges That There Are Other Search Engines Out There, Sort Of

from the ad-me dept

Tue, Jul 17th 2007 3:12pm — Joseph Weisenthal

Last month, a much-hyped partnership between Salesforce.com and Google turned out to be a real snoozer, when it was revealed that the tie-up would simply offer Salesforce.com customers a better way to manage their AdWords campaigns. One aspect of the deal that was troubling was that it belied the myth that all these various web services are so easily mashed up. After all, why should Salesforce.com have to sign a deal with Google to offer AdWords management? Ideally, any company would be able to offer this functionality. Today, Microsoft announced enhancements to its own AdManager service, which allows users to manage advertising campaigns on Microsoft's search. Now, however, customers can buy ads for Live search and for Ask.com. It's really great that Microsoft is taking this big tent approach, acknowledging that there are other search engines out there that customers would like to buy ads on, but it's still missing a couple -- Google and Yahoo come to mind. Ultimately, if it wants AdManager to be a valuable service, then it should allow customers to manage as many different campaigns as they want, through any search engine. This piecemeal approach, allowing customers to buy ads on different Microsoft-approved sites, isn't going to get the company very far in its software plus services strategy.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: search
Companies: ask, google, microsoft, yahoo

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

TheDock22, 17 Jul 2007 @ 3:26pm

The first steps....
The first steps towards recovery is admittance. ;)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Craig Ferrante, 17 Jul 2007 @ 4:41pm

Atleast they tried
Atleast Microsoft is giving you a option now. Id like to see google and yahoo give you the full control of the 3rd party advertising sites not just the option to turn ads on or off to 3rd party sites.

I use the big 3 to advertise on and google i feel is the easiest to manage then microsoft and then yahoo. Tried ask's and went back to google to manage those ads...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Steven, 17 Jul 2007 @ 4:47pm

Forget Microsoft...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
business, 17 Jul 2007 @ 5:12pm

I find it intresting that many of the people in the tech world today, wouldn't have their current jobs if it wasnt for a Microsoft product. Would these also be the same people badmouthing Microsoft every chance they get? or would the one's who are flinging their insults be those of a generation who do not yet have six-figure incomes.

As always though, there are exceptions to every rule - but with 90% desktop-share in a tech-driven world, makes anyone who knows the in's & out's of Microsoft products, much more richer than the person who does not - or - will not educate themselves in such.

Business as usual...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
A Torontoan, 17 Jul 2007 @ 5:40pm

Re:
I find it interesting that many people are so willing to shill for corporations that in the long run stifle innovation to make a buck. Most monopolies are good at making money for people involved with them. We don't owe microsoft a damn thing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Trvth Jvstice, 17 Jul 2007 @ 5:51pm

Why?
Why do so many of you hate big business? The reason they became such a big company is because they were good at what they did, made good products and therefore became successful.

I bet if Ubuntu started selling their product and became enormously successful, you'd be against them also.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Grapevine, 17 Jul 2007 @ 6:16pm

open standard, open search, open mind
We applaud Microsoft on their learning that the world does not revolve around them, especially in Search.

It is important that your customer has choice and simplicity when using any tools, thus allowing Ask.com is a step in the right direction. Ignoring Google and Yahoo is obviously a childish taunt, and shows pretty well that those 2 Search engines are the most popular over MS Live services.

Keep in mind that Ask.com is part of the Barry Diller empire, as is Expedia whch used to belong to MS, and thus Microsoft is more easily able to adopt them as an added search component on AdManager.

But sooner or later, if Microsoft expects to make any headway with this search advertising service they will have to admit Google and Yahoo to the party.

Meanwhile its business as usual in Redmond, keeping heads in the sand, ignoring popular wisdom, and not allowing much consumer choice.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Haywood, 17 Jul 2007 @ 8:15pm

Baffles me how it is going to work
Google isn't a verb for nothing. I don't personally know anyone who still uses anything else. The only reason the others still exist is inertia. I do use MS search once every time I install Windows, when IE comes up the first time. IE
defaults to MS, where I promptly search for Google then make it the home page. One more search for Firefox, now I'm IE free except for the occasional Firefox unfriendly site. Download the Google tool bar and Ad-block and I'm good to go. Ads? what ads.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Craig, 18 Jul 2007 @ 8:23am

http://luckybonza.com
That's why they made a little $6B purchase this year of a little Seattle digital marketing firm called aQuantive.
[ link to this | view in thread ]