Dear Mr. Nadella,
Always #2 Behind Google
Growing up in Puyallup since 1977 and living on both the west and eastsides here in the Puget Sound after graduating from the University with the same name, I’ve been profoundly affected by the impact of the REAL start of today’s technology revolution. Let’s be honest. It wasn’t Netscape or all the ensuing dotcom successes that created today’s virtual landscape, but it was the birth of Windows and the complementary products all created here in Redmond, Washington.
For a solid 20 years — give or take a handful — it was Microsoft that revolutionized the movement away from brick and mortar business. It was Bill Gates & Paul Allen’s efforts which created a solid foundation for what eventually became the dominance of what we know today as the “Big Four.”
Amazon, Apple, Google, & Facebook wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for Windows or Microsoft Office or the all the other products that literally fed the virtual ecosystem we have today. Yes, we are now using Google Docs and communicating off of Facebook’s tools and using Apple’s hardware sold in both Amazon’s stores as well as their own, but the world would have not even begun to consider all of these options without again, the ubiquitous acceptance Microsoft created by making PC’s a part of everyone’s household.
Today, Microsoft has made a resurgence under you, Mr. Nadella, but frankly, it may be short lived.
I like the new stores. The surface is definitely getting attention and potentially helping you regain some market share in terms of PCs. And Azure is going to help drive profits back to Redmond that won’t be completely monopolized by Amazon or other technologies.
However, one sore spot I am quite sure you and your team have discussed is this little thing we call search.
Obviously, I’m being facetious. It’s not little.
If it weren’t for Google, we potentially might not have the other Big 3 of tech and we definitely wouldn’t have many other larger players that don’t get enough credit in our world of media that likes to focus on just a few darlings. Expedia, Baidu, Naver and even Amazon are all a result of what Sergei Brin and Larry Page have paved in terms of pioneering paths. We found both Expedia and Amazon because they dominated the SERPs (search engine results pages just in case you’re not so familiar). Baidu and Naver became a need after Google showed them the way. And today, Google continues to help many other companies sprout into being and yet Bing continues to barely exist.
It’s been over 20+ years since the dawn of the Internet and while your predecessor wasn’t a big believer in the Internet initially, we know it’s obviously something we can’t ignore.
Yet, with all your amazing and high paid talent, Bing still remains #2 (at best).
The Most Powerful Resource on the Internet
I’ve already mentioned that Amazon and Expedia were potentially “found” because of the likes of Google.
I’ll also bet you that it’s not because of Facebook or Apple devices that we now have the richest man in the world just across the lake from you. I’ll bet you and the folks on the Redmond campuses that you didn’t plan on Mountain View being the heart of search.
Nevertheless, search has created hundreds, if not thousands of other industries including the one I work in daily.
Close to a decade ago, I examined what we were searching for the most. Surprisingly, google admitted it was their soon to be competitor in the advertising space, “facebook” that was constantly showing up in browsers as the # term. Until recent years, they admitted people were throwing it in there browsers as high as 3 billion+ times a month. Since then, they’ve readjusted their numbers potentially to to circumvent any more market share reduction by their biggest competitor.
Nevertheless, Google may have been the engine that not only created their own competitor, but many others including Wikipedia which is considered one of the most organically optimized websites in the world. Currently, Quora is building its own prominence through Google. The list is endless.
Yet, Bing continues to remain secondary as a source for anyone’s visibility. I tried to estimate who was actually even using Bing and reported it on Quora.
These are definitely biased towards search, but you can’t deny the truth behind these:
- Organic and paid search engine traffic contribute to more than 60% of total website visitors
- 48% of consumers start mobile research with a search engine
- 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day
- 81% of B2B purchase cycles start with a web search
- 57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation
- The highest spenders are most likely to turn to search for purchase information
- Conversion rates are 10 times higher from search than from social media
The Best Search Marketing Resources in your Backyard
Yet, while you and your team in Redmond were focused on many other products that were placed as a higher priority than search, local companies like Moz blossomed leveraging the power of Google’s amazing power right here just minutes away from Microsoft’s headquarters. They haven’t went anywhere and continue to be the main voice for how search engine marketing works.
Rand Fishkin, the founder the company has literally been one of the biggest names in the business since the early 2000’s. He’s helped spawn the careers of many other prominent search experts locally including Ian Lurie or David Mihm. I could even argue I was one of them given our dominance from 2010-2013 in the local space. Regardless, there have been dozens, if not hundreds of very intelligent and savvy folks here in the Puget Sound at your disposal.
However, you’ve hired folks that probably have simply justified their existence and continue collecting paychecks while Google continued its dominance.
Instead, you could have engaged and even have brought in these many search experts to support you. You could have easily enticed them or made a larger part of getting Bing on the map — literally. You could have invested so much more on the wealth of local resources.
I realize you haven’t been CEO for long, but just as a heads up, many of us are here (and some of us are even willing to help).
Big Window(s) of Opportunity
Recently, Rand was released from his own company. Here’s his message encapsulating what he was thinking on his departure. Frankly, if you get a chance to read it, I’m thinking there’s quite an opportunity here for you as CEO of a company that still wields significant power. I would empower this former “god of Search” to become one of your biggest architects and possibly help you to build Microsoft’s presence in the search world. I would even be willing to help out, if given the opportunity and promise of “true support” and I know many others who would be incredible at supporting your efforts as well. We didn’t dedicate our last 10+ years to this world because we thought it was going away.
And it’s not like we have to place our full support behind Bing, but as you did with a lot of user testing in earlier years (and what I believe still continues), you could bring us in for dinners, events, or what have you to continue to build up your search product to truly compete with Google. There’s a reason why people STILL choose Google, but there’s also many other reasons why we don’t have to be loyal to the search giant NOT based here in your background.
While the challenge seems insurmountable, let’s just say, Apple wasn’t Apple until this millennium. Amazon was losing money for MANY years and Google came out of nowhere in 1999. It’s not too late and like Andy Grove has said, there are “inflection points” that we can always leverage in business.
Speaking of…
Facebook’s slow death
And given Zuckerberg’s report about Facebook decreasing in user base along with all the folks I’ve heard from in recent years about their disgust of the social networking platform, I’m thinking there’s more opportunity to continue expanding the power of search. It’s also a simple reminder that search has so much more utility than social. While it’s nice to be “friendly” in this world, there’s business to be done and work to be carried out. And search let’s us do that.
I believe Microsoft has a relationship with Facebook. How about making the search component of Facebook MUCH more powerful. Frankly, it might be due Bing’s inability to create a strong enough search engine that has prevented Facebook from even growing as strong as it could have. So, it may be even more imperative that you take in as many of the local resources as possible to truly help your partner and Microsoft for the long term.
There’s potentially even a way to integrate the various cultures into one platform. How about a search engine that automatically translates. I remember in my 5 years in China that Bing’s translator tool was one of the better ones. Google also hasn’t been as successful as Microsoft has in terms of working with the Chinese. How about finding a way to bridge the two cultures even more than now by improving Bing in a way that automatically brings in Chinese results into the SERP or integrates English results into Chinese?
And given that society still searches more than anything else (maybe minus email — where again, you may have scrwed the pooch — cough cough hotmail vs. gmail), you might want to consider leveraging this opportunity…
Before it is too late.
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