Where is Microsoft headed?

• Jun. 30, 2003

There has been a lot of buzz lately in the search world regarding Microsoft's new spider. Microsoft has already announced a new search engine, and their focus with the new product is Google. Many people say that Google has nothing to fear, but I have my doubts.

Other new products slated for release in the coming years include the next generation of operating system currently codenamed "Longhorn".  This new OS has many new features, but the one that caught my eye is the improved search feature, borrowed from SQL server. This new search will allow users to not only search through their computers for a file, but also search the web right from their desktops.

Combine this new search ability with a new search engine and what do you get? Microsoft's domination of yet another market - this time it's web search.

But it goes much further than this. They have also recently announced that Internet Explorer 6 will be the last stand alone version of the popular browser. Any future versions will be integrated into future OS versions. In other words, IE 7 will be built into Longhorn.

Therefore, when you buy your next version of Windows operating system in 2005 you will get an integrated browser, with default search preferences set to MSN. Not only that, but there's a good chance that the next generation OS will require new hardware to operate. Therefore you will have to buy a new computer if you want the latest OS to run.

Considering that about 1/2 the population in North America still use Windows 98, it won't be much of a stretch to consider that a good portion of those will decide it's time to upgrade the old Pentium 300 to something a little more modern, and will opt for the fast new computer with the new OS built in (and conveniently already configured to use MSN).

Who's left for Microsoft to target?

Rob Sullivan

Production Supervisor
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning
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