Wednesday, July 27th, 2005, 4:18 pm
No Competition = No Innovation
Filed under: According to Bloomberg, innovation definitely required motivation:
Microsoft has had the ability to develop a satellite map service for MSN since 1998. Chairman Bill Gates decided in April, the same month Google released its version, to rush the project. He gave his engineers a deadline of 100 days. Stephen Lawler, who runs the Virtual Earth group, and his team figured they would need about a year to get the satellite mapping technology ready.
Also on the same topic, it is rather frustrating that it took several years until Microsoft decided to fix the bugs inherent in Internet Explorer 6 and add valuable yet fundamental features like support for feeds. This move was a result of Firefox, of course, but more sadly, Internet Explorer 7 imitates Firefox, much like Virtual Earth intends to match Google Maps and show that development in the Microsoft compus is not dead, yet. Note the subtle use of the word development, not innovation.
July 28th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw Virtual Earth, it is just blatant. Unfortunately a lot people will end up using Microsoft’s inferior imitations just because they are Microsoft (particularly if the Microsoft version come pre-loaded like IE7 will do).
MSN Search seems to get more and more like Google everyday. I have noticed that Yahoo seems to be going down that road too but it doesn’t seem so bad since Yahoo have a few innovative projects at the moment.