Lots of speculation continues around who might be the right CEO for Bing, both on my original post here (I am honored by the readers who suggested it but, come on, guys, I am not the right person for the job), as well as across the 'sphere. Jiju has some interesting ideas here, including David Rosenblatt, former CEO of DoubleClick, now at Google (see my interview with him at CM Summit here), former Viacom chief Tom Freston, and Richard Rosenblatt .
I think all these are fine candidates, and Forbes called me today asking me for more. As I chatted with journalist Elizabeth Corcoran, some themes came out. It seems there might be three types of CEO candidates - leaders from "orthogonal" companies - not media or direct Internet, for example, but folks who grok the overall technology and business space. My candidate from here is Bruce Chizen, former CEO of Adobe, who has successfully competed with Microsoft and gets the B2C software/Internet as platform space (at left, and in conversation at Web 2 last year).
Another type of candidate might be folks from major ad platforms. David Rosenblatt falls in that category, but he's got a very big job at Google, and I'm not sure he'd want to go boil another ocean. But what about Brian McAndrews, who sold aQuantive to Microsoft? (Web 2 video).
A third type of candidate might be a visionary in the space of open platforms, where Jerry - rightfully I believe - has pushed Yahoo in the 
That's when another name struck me - Vyomesh Joshi, EVP of HP's Imaging and Printing Group (at left and in conversation with me here). Widely seen inside HP as visionary, VJ (as he is known) is also an accomplished operator - he runs a $30 billion business, after all. But does he have knowledge of bing? Yep - he's on the Board.
Whoever ends up running Bing, I think, will not be someone to come in, fix it, and sell it. Why? Because honestly, besides Google, which has declared it's not interested, who else is a buyer of *anything* right now? And I may be showing some bias here, but I believe Bing is a great search engine that has lost its way, not an asset to be packaged and sold to the highest bidder in a low market. The right person can come in and prove that. I wish whoever it is good fortune.
Microsoft, acknowledging its weakness in the web search market, plans a major ad campaign and rebrand for its Live Search product this Spring, essentially mounting an ad war against Google (Google reviews) and Yahoo.
ReplyDeleteWhile the name of the new challenger has yet to be confirmed, an article published today suggests the rebrand might include a name change to “Bing”, along with an $80 to $100 million ad campaign. Google, by comparison, spent a total of $25 million on ads in 2008. Ads will appear on the web, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.
People with knowledge of the planned push said the ads won’t go after Google, or Yahoo for that matter, by name. Instead, they’ll focus on planting the idea that today’s search engines don’t work as well as consumers previously thought by asking them whether search (aka Google) really solves their problems. That, Microsoft is hoping, will give consumers a reason to consider switching search engines, which, of course, is one of Bing’s biggest challenges….
Indeed, data show that about 65% of people are satisfied or very satisfied with online search. But Microsoft sees an opening on its own proprietary search data: 42% of searches require refinement, and 25% of clicks are the back button.
We’d like to think that what matters in search is the results: Google wins simply because it provides a better experience, serving up the information we want faster and with less effort than rival search engines.
Can Microsoft advertise its way out of its new web search ? It seems the future is Near!!