Microsoft talks about its new services strategy

Heh… the search experience is strange. It starts loading in a mini window on the page, then redirects me to the gaudy msn search. Where’s the consistency?

You can’t start out with a homepage that looks like Google then redirect me to a craptacular search results page that looks like tellitubbies!

“with all the brilliant, passionate people around these hallways and the aggressive ship schedule we have, the results are going to impress you”

I love this. Not to denigrate MSFTies above all others, but come on. I have friends who work at MSFT, so I know how hard they work. But I’m sorry, I’ve heard one too many times about MSFT people talking about how brilliant and passionate they are. (They also apparently love to talk about carpet bombing people.) That kind of talk is clearly a signal that someoen is still stuck in a late 90s mode of thinking. I think the game has changed and its not just about being brilliant and passionate – its about providing value to customers (it always was about that, but bubble euphoria allowed people to get away with a lot for a few years there).

Sorry, people do not buy *our* services just because we tell them how brilliant and passionate we are. We have to show value. MSFT employees would do well to remember this.

And if I may, an aggressive ship schedule has gotten MSFT in trouble before, hasn’t it? Shipping things out before they’re ready? Shipping things out before they work with Firefox?

Curiouser and curiouser…

Take a look at some Opera guys tearing apart the idiot JS coders at start.com:

http://nontroppo.org/wiki/PatchingStartCom

“Take a look at some Opera guys tearing apart the idiot JS coders at start.com”

There’s really no need to be nasty. I know the developers of Start.com (the basis of Live.com) and they are definitely not idiots. They’ve been working very hard to build the best product they can within the given time constraints, and frankly, I think they’ve done an amazing job.

As a Firefox user, I understand the frustration of not having full functionality in other browsers at this time, but these limitations are definitely not purposeful on their part, and they are working on fixing them ASAP.

By the way, I don’t see the intention of that link as “tearing apart” the Start.com developers. In fact, I’ll forward it to the team.

> but these limitations are definitely not purposeful on their part, and they are working on fixing them ASAP.

Why would a company *think* of releasing a web portal without support for any of the other browsers? Smart coders make this stuff work in all browsers FROM THE START. The reasons they give on the start.com blog reek of amateur inexperience.

An amazing job? For producing a web portal that functions on one browser only?

Read their reasons on their blog. If you are going to write a web portal, you should hire smart Javascript programmers rather than a bunch of frontpage monkeys:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/startcom/Blog/cns!1pTNqgeSRxwfEFK-lp62aiFQ!418.entry

I’m going to plug a neew post at my relatively new blog, in which I think Offic Live will be a more successful brand than Windows Live brand. My intention with the blog is to give give unfiltered view of things from inside Microsoft, but not as pessimistic and cynanical as mini-msft.

It’s at http://msinside.blogspot.com and I hope to add to the discourse with a unique point of view only afforded by the anonymity. Come and check it out.

I

Rolling Thunder…a random bombing campaign that had a cool name, but in the end, accomplished nothing. Leave it to Microsoft to pick the wrong one.

When all those superubercaptaincoolguys at MS can figure out how to code their web services and gadgets correctly, so that they work with all compliant browsers, i’ll stop laughing at start.com…(Our Motto: We still think it’s 1999, and IE Rules ALL).

Oh, and Brandon..really…stop with the “Oh if ONLY you could see the REALLY COOL SECRET stuff i’m working on”. If you can’t talk about it, then don’t, at all. That kind of crap is just insecure peniswaving, and makes people care even less about whatever it is you’re working on than we already don’t.

Just because you work at the same company as Robert doesn’t mean you have to pick up his bad habits.

“Read their reasons on their blog.”

Ok, here’s what it says:

“These represent the typical requirements that have blocked us from running on a larger set of browsers. If you represent a browser that does not run Start.com, we would appreciate any help resolving these issues. You can reach me directly via the e-mail address listed in my profile, or you can contact the start.com team directly. For the rest of you, we are working hard at enabling Start.com on the widest array of browsers and devices.”

If Scott Isaacs (http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=118319) doesn’t qualify as a smart Javascript programmer, then I don’t know who does.

Live.com is not a finished product — that’s why it’s clearly labeled “Beta” at the top of the page. If you’re willing to give it another shot in a few weeks you might be pleasantly surprised.

Matt,

“Live.com is not a finished product — that’s why it’s clearly labeled “Beta” at the top of the page. If you’re willing to give it another shot in a few weeks you might be pleasantly surprised.”

We’re not talking about some tiny start-up that’s showing a proof of concept. We’re talking about the largest, most powerful software company in the world making what was supposedly a major strategy shift announcement that would rock the world. The “come back in a couple of weeks” line really, really sounds weak in that context.

This was a PR disaster for Microsoft, and apart from a couple of die-hard fans, Microsoft is taking it in the chin for this.

Oh – And if someone didn’t confine their bounds and develop from the get-go with cross-browser capabilities (at least with the current breed of top-notch browsers), then they aren’t a smart browser period. You don’t implement it and then figure out what knobs you need to twist to make it work elsewhere.

Errr, smart programmer rather than smart browser there. I’m not a very smart comment writer right now, sorry.

Yeah it looked OK. It has the desired results to compete against Google as your home page.

WOW is what you say when comparing the search though. Add onto your search {frsh=90} {popl=90} {mtch=90} for your results and say goodbye to Google. If this was achievable in MSN Search then I just have not been noticing a MS secret.

The fact that I can scale the results to include time frame and rankings is very good. Google your 3 month search results filter just cannot cut it today. I don’t want information that old. I want information that is being talked about today and not back in web0.75beta :-s

Good one Microsoft

Wow… that explains it why they couldn’t get it working on any other browser. They brought in an IE heavyweight that hasn’t touched another browser to write a portal that’s supposed to work on more than one browser?

> If Scott Isaacs (http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=118319) doesn’t qualify as a smart Javascript programmer, then I don’t know who does.

> Live.com is not a finished product — that’s why it’s clearly labeled “Beta” at the top of the page. If you’re willing to give it another shot in a few weeks you might be pleasantly surprised.

Doesn’t work in Firefox – that’s terrible for a launch, even if it is only Beta. I won’t be using this.

This Live platfor is excellent, I am hoping to see some video’s on Channel9 with the Live.com developers soon

Well I tried it, and I can’t get it to add feeds!

I know the feed, I don’t need to search for it – I’m annoyed that what I want to do is an ‘advanced’ thing, surely loads of people know the feed urls, but it won’t add.

Work in start.com, so it ain’t my feed.

OK, well I’m using IE7, but that isn’t going to make any difference is it? I’d laugh if it did.

As above with the overal comment though, nice but not new. Watch this space? Maybe.

Sitting back and watching this, what an amazing trainwreck, even the most die-hard’s are reduced to pips and squeeks. I mean you just know any MFST launch will be a flop (even the big good ones that can’t fail, like Xbox 360, still have huge glitches, i.e. the WalMart wireless problems) but this wow, gives “inept” a whole new meaning.