Wow. I just finished watching my first Super Bowl in five years (the NFL isn’t too popular in Japan), and it was pretty exciting. Plus I love the Campanile effects they use on the instant replays now. Now if they’d just lose the lameass anti-drug ads…
Microsoft is setting its sights on Google. Unfortunately, I think Google is actually quite vulnerable, despite their cadre of geniuses. While they undoubtedly have the best search out there now, search technnology is still ridiculously primitive, and Google hasn’t really come up with anything that pushes the envelope–Google still works basically like Alta Vista did in 1996 (from the user’s point of view): type in query terms, get results list, skim, return, repeat.
Google is vulnerable to the next young upstarts who make a radical breakthrough in the search interaction model, or visualization techniques, or multimedia search–the list is long. While Google certainly has the brainpower to make these breakthroughs themselves, I wonder if business interests will let them, especially if they threaten lucrative business models like AdWords (the innovator’s dilemma strikes again).
So the breakthroughs will most likely come from young people in a university somewhere, unconcerned with business models and marketing plans. The difference is that this time Microsoft will be waiting with blank checks in hand.
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