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Friday, May 11th, 2012
Mozilla, creators of popular internet browser Firefox, claim Microsoft is restricting user choice in Windows 8, by only supporting Internet Explorer.
In a potential online PR disaster for Microsoft, both Mozilla and Google have raised public concerns about the future of Windows operating systems.
Harvey Anderson, from Mozilla’s general counsel, claims Microsoft will return Windows 8 users to the “digital dark ages”, when only Internet Explorer was available to navigate the web.
Anderson says Microsoft is refusing to allow Firefox, Chrome, or indeed any other browser to work on its new operating system, which will be loaded on ARM processor chips.
Mozilla claims Microsoft is planning for its new Windows RT (Windows running on ARM) to run in two environments – a ‘Classic’ mode, and a ‘Metro’ mode which will run apps.
“However, Windows on ARM prohibits any browser except for Internet Explorer from running in the privileged ‘Windows Classic’ environment,” Anderson said. “In practice, this means that only Internet Explorer will be able to perform many of the advanced computing functions vital to modern browsers in terms of speed, stability, and security, to which users have grown accustomed.
“Given that IE can run in Windows on ARM, there is no technical reason to conclude other browsers can’t do the same.”
Anderson said the decision would restrict user choice whilst also killing competition and innovation.
“We encourage Microsoft to remain firm on its user choice principles. Excluding third-party browsers contradicts Microsoft’s own published Principles, that users and developers have relied upon for years,” he said.
Anderson’s comments may hit home hard with Microsoft, which has already faced antitrust action in the past. Back in 2001, DOJ vs Microsoft saw the firm forced to allow PC sellers to include non-Microsoft software on new computers. The European Commission was also involved, leading to Windows users being given a choice of browsers in Europe.
Google has backed Mozilla’s concerns. A spokesman told V3: “We share the concerns Mozilla has raised… we’ve always welcomed innovation in the browser space across all platforms, and strongly believe that having great competitors makes us all work harder.”
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Tags: ARM, Browsers, chrome, Classic mode, Firefox, internet, Metro mode, Microsoft, mobile, mozilla, online, search, Windows, windows 8, windows RT
Posted in Online PR (Public Relations)
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Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
Internet marketers and SEO professionals can learn from the way Microsoft has handled its mobile strategy, according to an article published on the International Business Times website.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system was launched in 2010, and has so far only managed to gain a market share of 3.9 per cent. In comparison, Apple iPhones make up 30.2 per cent of the market, and Google’s Android operating system powers around half of smartphones currently in use.
Microsoft fares a little better in the apps market, with a five per cent market share, compared to RIM’s 15 per cent, Apple’s 30 per cent and Google’s 50 per cent.
According to the article’s author, Ryan Buddenhagen, SEOs and marketers can learn from the way Microsoft has pushed its phone – as the company has tried hard to encourage developers to create compelling apps for its devices, knowing full well that they will shy away from developing apps for Microsoft’s mobile operating system in favour of those with more users.
Microsoft is achieving this by offering excellent customer support to developers, and a comprehensive learning program. Last year, the company hosted more than 850 sessions around the world to familiarise developers with its Windows Phone operating system – three times more than in 2010. In another effort to woo developers, Microsoft is creating new ways for them to make money by selling apps.
Microsoft has reportedly been more attentive to developer queries than its competitors, and it has made its app tools very user friendly, helping to establish better relationships and a sense of trust with its developers. Marketers can learn from this approach by putting customers first, says Buddenhagen.
In the article, Buddenhagen also explains how lessons can also be learned from the way Microsoft is marketing its Windows Phone ‘story’ – or at least in the way it plans to. According to Microsoft, they simply haven’t invested the money needed to tell the phone’s story around the world, but they are sure that when they do, their products will gain support. Rather than relying on cold statistics and features, it is important to establish an identity for a product, and a compelling backstory is an important part of this. SEO professionals can push this story online and drive traffic to web properties that support this story.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: internet marketing, Microsoft, SEO, Windows Phone
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation
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Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
The long-awaited migration of Yahoo! search marketing accounts into Microsoft’s adCenter is set to begin today, as part of the search alliance originally formed by the two in 2010, according to an article published by New Media Age.
Search traffic for Yahoo! will also be powered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine as a result of the migration – which has already launched in America, Canada and India.
Scheduled for completion at the end of April, the migration will allow search engine marketing professionals to purchase ads for both Yahoo! and Bing via adCenter.
Microsoft’s UK marketing manager, Cedric Chambaz, commented on the launch of the alliance.
He said: “Starting around 19 March, we expect to progressively start serving adCenter ads to Yahoo! searchers. The entire Yahoo! paid search volume is expected to be transitioned to adCenter within approximately two weeks from that date.”
More about the transition can be found on the Microsoft adCenter blog.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Tags: adCenter, advertising, Bing, Microsoft, Search Alliance, search engine, Search Engine Marketing, yahoo
Posted in Search Engine News
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Friday, February 10th, 2012
Microsoft has unveiled a number of new improvements to its adCenter platform, according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
Changes have been made to campaign budget overview, mobile ad targeting and the character limit in ad descriptions.
The character description length has been increased by one – from 70 characters to 71 – to match the limit featured on AdWords; the expansion of the word limit is expected to make running PPC marketing campaigns on multiple platforms much easier.
Microsoft have also added a budget overview gadget to adCenter’s dashboard. This provides a simple overview of the campaign’s budget without the need to install extra plug-ins or programs.
Mobile targeting has also been improved; adCenter now has the ability to tailor campaigns to target specific mobile devices.
Campaigns can also be designed to target different types of phone, such as Windows Phones or iPhones, and tablets utilising operating systems such as iOS or Android.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft adCenter, PPC, PPC marketing
Posted in Pay Per Click Marketing
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Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Having been surrounded by rumours of an imminent sale, Yahoo! – a popular platform for search engine marketing initiatives – has seen the value of its shares drop by the most in two months, according to an article published by Bloomberg.
Share value dropped by 5.6 per cent – now with a value of $15.64 – representing the largest decrease since early August.
With rivals Google and Bing’s owner, Microsoft heavily rumoured to be looking at funding separate deals with other investors, Yahoo! is now said to be looking to sell its Asian assets – instead of selling the whole company.
Any potential sale of Asian assets would see the proceeds redistributed amongst current shareholders.
Co-founder of the search engine, Jerry Yang, speaking at the All Thing Digital Asia conference, stated: “The intent going in is not to put ourselves up for sale.”
“The intent is to look at all the options. There’s plenty of options for the board, and plenty of options for our shareholders to realize value.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: Google, Microsoft, shares, yahoo
Posted in Search Engine News
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Monday, October 24th, 2011
With speculation rife for months that Yahoo! is soon to be sold, Microsoft is rumoured to be working on another possible bid, this time with Silver Lake Partners and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to buy the search engine, according to an article published by The Wall Street Journal.
The bid, which is currently being discussed, would see Microsoft put up the majority of the finance – around several billion dollars – with both Silver Lake Partners and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board contributing a lesser sum to the deal; while banks would arrange the rest of the financing.
However, insiders close to the matter have revealed that should the financing plan fall through or become too complex, the deal could be abandoned.
Microsoft previously made a bid for Yahoo! back in 2008.
The bid, worth around $44.6 billion, was rejected and since then Yahoo!’s share value has plummeted – losing nearly 44 per cent of their value.
Although a reasonably popular platform for search engine marketing ventures, any potential Microsoft bid for Yahoo! will be aimed at protecting the Search Alliance partnership that the two struck up following Microsoft’s failed bid.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Tags: Microsoft, search engine, yahoo
Posted in Search Engine News
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Monday, October 3rd, 2011
In a bid to improve financial losses and gain significant ground on Google, Bing is set to unleash an update that will see the search engine produce more relevant results much faster than ever before, according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
Currently known as ‘Tiger’, the update is being worked on by both Bing and Microsoft engineers, and has undergone a gradual rollout since August.
It is expected that the rollout will be completed before the turn of the year, according to a spokesperson for Microsoft.
By using Solid State Disk (SSD) technology, Bing is expecting an improved level of efficiency – which could potentially improve search engine marketing.
Speaking in a video, general manager of Microsoft’s Search Technology Center in Asia, Yongdong Wang states: “In Tiger, we not only look at improved efficiency but also look at new ways of processing queries.”
Continuing, he added: “These new ways will enable scenarios where we can significantly improve the relevance of the results seen by users.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Tags: Bing, Microsoft, Search Engine Marketing
Posted in Search Engine News
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Wednesday, July 27th, 2011
For the last few days, there have been rumours that Bing has been running tests of paid PPC ads within the search results. Not placed off to the right or clearly highlighted at the top or bottom, but ‘camouflaged’ within the organic search results.
Now, this may prove to be an advertisers’ dream, but is likely to meet a backlash from consumers and some search agencies who have previously reacted badly to this type of ‘hidden advertising’ within the index. For search marketing agencies who work hard on organic results through SEO and search marketing, this testing of placement of paid ads in the middle of the SERPs will undoubtedly cause the SEO blogosphere to respond.
This is already a time of shifting sands for search marketing agencies, especially those who have been slow to realise the importance of social for both search engines and searchers, and with a growing focus on personalisation, dominating the SERPs is becoming ever harder. Losing one or two positions within the index to paid advertisers is more likely to cause bad feeling from those who believe the search engines need to operate a level playing field rather than favour those with large advertising budgets.
Those organic results are proving important to get return on investment and results for clients, and are where a good agency with experienced SEO staff can still outshine a mediocre one every time a search is returned.
Will Microsoft continue testing? And how will Google respond if its major competitor puts paid ads in the middle of the search results? Bing has been making advances on Google’s market share over the last year but still has less than half of that of Google. There is a fine line to tread in the search engine market between satisfying advertisers and investors, and
upsetting consumers, and only time will tell whether this is a canny move by Bing or a very bad idea.
Tags: Bing, index, Microsoft, paid advertising, PPC, search engines, serps
Posted in Blog, SEM Industry
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Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
The video chat feature that Facebook have announced in partnership with Skype is being rolled out today for millions of users. This is obviously a rolling program as we cannot yet see it yet, nor can we see the group chat facility that has been promised (more on that later).
However, having been using Google+ Hangouts avidly for the last week, we can already see a flaw in the Facebook offering. Hangouts allow, today, up to 10 people to enter a group video chat. One on one video chat in a Hangout is a simple matter by only inviting that one person!
From a business point of view, the Hangout option of up to 10 people is extremely attractive. Live webinars with 9 invitees, live focus groups with attendees from across the planet, online project collaboration between diverse teams and/or experts/consultants, share a Youtube video to highlight a point or to see what your competitors are putting online in video media, feedback from your customers, tech support through video. IN reality, the uses are endless and Facebook does not offer more than a limited spectrum of uses because of the 1 to 1 only choice.
Yes, we understand that for businesses using Facebook already, the closed space that is currently G+ means that many of your customers are not in there. Yet. But the field trial is not going to remain closed for long. And when your customers start moving to Google +, which undoubtedly they will because it is Google, then you need to be ready to make the most of it.
Google has played the canny marketing game it often does – using scarcity and hence DESIRE as a driver for adoption. However, there is a very practical reason why G+ is closed – much of it is definitely not wrinkle free yet, and whilst much is intuitive, there are features which will flummox your average home user. And those home users = customers for the businesses which generate Google’s billions. So it must work for those people before the doors are fully open.
Focusing on the positives of Facebook’s video chat, it has long been believed that video would be the ‘killer app’ on the Net and not just video content from Hollywood etc. The telephone took off when it stopped being used to transmit content in broadcast mode (songs on a Sunday as I recall was the earliest use!). When users were allowed to make their own content by talking to each other, the telephone became a ‘must have’; so the advent of sufficient bandwidth allowing video chat to be possible, (with broadband becoming more affordable and accessible) has meant that the opening of channels to allow that video content to be created have become possible.
Allowing everyone to be able to talk to anyone who they have friended on Facebook opens a huge raft of possibilities. For businesses, the most obvious use is customer services. Here is a direct line to the company you want to talk to, and you can see the person at the other end. This gives a boost in confidence to the consumer, and businesses should be rapid adopters of the opportunities this presents. Although this does mean that any company will need to have customer support staff who are comfortable using this technology and have the time to attend to video chat requests.
Now, on to this improved chat. The actual announcement is a nothingness – it’s just group text chat. This has been in existence for such a very long time outside of FB that the announcement falls flat really. Its use for businesses may allow another level of open, two way communication – which businesses really need to come to terms with in this new era of so-me – but it is no ways a ground breaker as Skype conference calls with the added chat facility have been around for sooo long, as well as a zillion other text chat options. This is no ground breaker and in itself simply re-inforces the feeling of fear that this entire press conference communicated.
Overall Summary – the quality of the video chat seems to be better at this time than Google+ Hangouts, but G+ is a trial and Google have not thrown the resources at it yet whilst in test mode. Multi-person video chats are the killer app, not one to one. The group text chat means nothing.
BUT, businesses need to start thinking how they are going to manage the human resources to back up their presence on social media. There are going to be two major social networks now, and whilst G+ looks like it might be the choice of the more techy audience (for now at least), the reality is that in a few short months, any business will need to be on both, whoever your target audience is.
This means that whilst metrics are important, business behaviour will need to be far more pro-active and imaginative about how to engage. Customers already complain regularly about business failure to engage with them using the tools that the customers are using eg Twitter, FB, etc and being in broadcast rather than dialogue mode has the potential to be a reputation killer. We all know what happened to Ratner and understanding how to communicate in and with the public using social media is going to become a core business skill.
Social media is no longer an ignorable sales, marketing and promotion mechanism. The big players are evolving their partnerships ready for one enormous battle for users – Skype + Microsoft + Facebook vs Google + their constant buy-outs of partner technologies, services and apps to give them an ever-extending portfolio. You cannot as a business pick a side, so you will need to learn to work with and on both of them.
Tags: business, facebook, g+, Google, marketing, Microsoft, opinion, Promotion, sales, skype, Social Media, video chat, zuckerberg
Posted in Blog, Google
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Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
Microsoft is hoping to rival Google by joining forces with Chinese search giant Baidu.
The firm has signed an agreement with Baidu to provide English-language search results, using Microsoft’s Bing engine.
Baidu has grown massively through its Chinese language search options, and views a partnership with Microsoft as key to expanding into multilingual search.
Market commentators said the move would seriously weaken Google’s position, as it currently has a stranglehold on English-language search in China. Google has already axed it’s Google.cn engine.
According to Bloomberg, Jake Li, from Guotai Junan Securities in Shenzen, said: “This is not good news for Google. Most Chinese internet users currently prefer Google’s English-language search results over Baidu, whose service will be improved by the partnership with Microsoft.”
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Tags: baidu, chinese search engine, english-language search, Google, Microsoft
Posted in Search Engine News
