I sat down today with my delicious cup of Irish coffee and read Cringely’s latest article, only to confirm once again that he’s probably smoking something highly illegal. Not only that, but this latest article has led me to suspect that he might be injecting something directly into his bloodstream as well. I’m fairly certain that he’ll find CIA agents knocking on his door in the near future (most likely to join in, not to arrest him).

I admit that I’ve enjoyed most of Cringely’s articles up till now. He’s a smart guy and has some interesting insights sometimes. But when he writes about Microsoft, it usually involves some kind of prediction of Microsoft’s doom, and he seems to be consistently wrong. Probably 95% of the time.

What Cringely fails to realize, is that the guys over at Microsoft will gladly admit when they are, or have been, doing something wrong, and will change when it is required. This is one of the reasons I mentioned before why I think Microsoft is winning. They’ve noticed what they lack compared to Google, they’ve admitted it, and they’ve taken action. A few years ago I sent a flame email to Ballmer complaining about various things. And people who know me, know that I can be very direct with my criticism. Some even consider it offensive and harsh sometimes. So you can imagine my surprise when Ballmer actually thanked me for it.

It will ofcourse take a while before they get to be anywhere near as good as Google, but they’ll work hard to achieve that. So I do agree with Cringely when he quotes Einstein at the end of his article: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Microsoft also seems to agree. They’ve even brought on new blood, in the form of Ray Ozzie, to help them come up with new strategies. You can read more about that in this article from Fortune. They’ll be spending a lot of money to build their own data centers as well, similar to Google, and they seem to be taking this new Live strategy pretty serious. Plus, they have a lot more money to spend than Google. No wonder Google is worried. And their approach, once again, seems to be a holistic one. As mentioned here:

To help simplify its message, Microsoft has consolidated its content and tools for Windows Live developers on a single Microsoft Developer Network site.

“We are opening the Windows Live platform to third parties to create a virtuous ecosystem” for users, developers, partners, advertisers and Microsoft, said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president for the MSN Communications Platform with the MSN and Personal Services Division.

And then you have our beloved Steve-O saying:

“I do think…that this is really a platform play. We need an ecosystem, as we call it, around our Live platform, just as we needed an ecosystem around Windows, thousands of communications service providers, thousands of content authors, thousands of people who want to provide unique, customized versions and views of the Internet and information. All of that will build in the excitement and interest and audience. And then we also need an ecosystem of advertisers and agencies and search engine marketing companies. And we’re dedicated to that kind of partnership and ecosystem…The only way we will be able to get to critical mass is by literally reaching out.”

See that? That’s also one of the reasons I mentioned before why I think Microsoft is winning. Their Live strategy is not an isolated thing, but they think of it in terms of a much broader and holistic strategy where everything needed is worked out and present, and works with everything else seamlessly. It has become a company-wide effort. And they have a major advantage when it comes to developers and tools; nobody understands this better than Microsoft right now, and nobody has better technology. They have a similar advantage when it comes to the Xbox as well, but I’ll write about that in the future. Google won’t be able to compete.

This is a massive undertaking, and as I mentioned before, it will take a while before Microsoft can get all it’s products ready and can really begin to compete with Google who’s enjoyed at least a 4 year head start. Which brings me to this article by John C. Dvorak. Dvorak seems to complain about the fact that MSN search still has a long way to go compared to Google. Ofcourse he’s right, but he also fails to mention that the MSN guys practically just started, and there are many area’s that still need (lots of) work.

For example, when I do a search for ‘karel donk’ on MSN search, I get the following sponsored ads:

Cheap Donk Prices – www.nextag.com
We Have Millions of Products. Read Donk Reviews!

Donk
Find the Lowest Price on Donk Items!
www.kadazzle.com

Honestly, who expects me to click on those? What the hell are Donk prices and items? In comparison, when I do the same search on Google, I get no ads. Obviously Google is a lot smarter. If I do a search on “DSC-R1″ however, both MSN search and Google know I’m talking about a camera from Sony, and list relevant ads that make sense, with Google still making some more sense than MSN.

In another test example, when I searched for “robert x cringely smoking crack”, both MSN and Google list this website as the first result, which conveniently contains “Robert Cringely”, “John Dvorak” and “smoking crack” all on one page. So I guess it’s a tie.

I’ve also been trying out other Windows Live products. One of them is Windows Live OneCare, which is a pretty good product so far. It’s just too bad that it won’t be available for people outside the US for now. And I was quite disappointed to find out that, as a beta tester, I couldn’t take advantage of the lower prices in April because of that. So I look forward to it’s worldwide availability. That’s going to be when you’ll be hearing more about Symantec and McAfee talking to, or more accurately, complaining to the EU Antitrust Commission.

I’ve also tried Windows Live Messenger and have no complaints so far. And then there’s Windows Live Mail, which I have yet to try. There seemed to have been a delay in converting my account to the new interface, so I’m still waiting for that to happen. But I can already say three things about it: One, if it doesn’t support POP3 access like Gmail, I won’t be using it. And two, if it inserts ads in emails I send to people, even if it’s just a single line, I won’t be using it. I don’t want anything changing my emails. If you want to scan my emails to display ads based on context, by all means, go ahead. But don’t put garbage in my emails. And third, the ad on the right is way too big and distracting, they’re going to have to remove it and come up with something less distracting. Gmail is a good example of how it should be done.

And now, having said all that, I should once again mention that I am very skeptical about ad-supported software and services, mainly because I don’t think online advertising, the way it is usually done, is effective. I wrote about this in more details before. I later came to find out that the main problem I described there is referred to as Banner-Blindness. Most advertisers probably fail to realize this, and I can confidently say that Google and Microsoft aren’t making any money off of me with advertising. In addition, there are other problems they’re facing right now, such as click fraud and spam, and there will no doubt be more in the future.

So with all those big investments in large datacenters and building ad supported software and services, you have to wonder if it’s not too risky. I recently wrote about the need for more power efficient hardware, and it seems managing those large power-hungry datacenters will only get more and more expensive in the future as energy becomes scarce and more expensive. Not to mention the costs for bandwidth.

So I want to end this post by quoting the end of one of my previous articles:

Companies who are jumping on the ad-supported software and services bandwagon these days, as Microsoft seems to be doing, should carefully consider this. In the long term it may prove to be the wrong kind of investment, that is, if your intentions are to really make enough money from it, to support those products and services.