Vista-
Definition: view or prospect, especially. one seen through a long, narrow avenue or passage.
Microsoft made its move for world domination yesterday. All kidding aside Vista has gotten great reviews for its interface, and bad reviews from geeks.
CNET is calling Vista just an expensive upgrade to XP.
So what does that have to do with online marketing?
Well, Microsoft has made big moves of late that has culminated into its big Vista OS launch. It was not too long ago that the big daddy of OS launched Live.com as their first assault on Google.
In an attempt at one upsmanship, MS launched Live as a search engine and portal into what looks to culminate into an attempt at bringing all our computing online. Almost like a front for their software suite.
Well, the engine has been a mess. And as the two guys from Mountain View can tell you, it all starts and ends with search. Its as if MS is pretending to be an engine while semi-forcing us to use their online goodies. It just does not seem like they care to get their engine in order. And their third place showing in market share is evidence of such.
Pulling in at number two is Yahoo who has their own crisis as it implodes on itself. How can the company t
hat bought Overture (who invented Pay Per Click) get spanked by Google at its own game? Interestingly searchers stay on Yahoo, longer than they do on Google.
On the surface one would think this is great news for Yahoo. But, the nature of search is that people leave your site! And if the results are good, they do not come back until their next search.
Is Google better because of their technology? Yah perhaps. But you have to factor better business practices.. As hard as the investors may push, Google has stayed true to it core; search. It just so happens the sponsored ads fit right in.
Sure, Yahoo has ads and so does MSN for that matter. But go to the front of either of the latter. And then go to Google.
So do you think your really need all that crap on your website now?
(in defense of Live, they do have a Googlish interface, but live is yet to be a known brand. Most will still reach it via MSN.com)
On that note, Google has killed the* Google Bomb. Or so they say. You know that funny thing that geeks with time on their hands do by massively linking to George Bush or John Kerry pages? For years you could type "miserable failure", and "waffler" into G and get the Bush and Kerry pages. 
Well, they say they have fixed that one. But as soon as they claimed the fix, the black hats over at WebMasterWorld all claimed fraud.
So why would Google do such a thing? Um, because they want to cover up what works no doubt. The miserable failure example is the favorite way for SEO's to explain an important part of the Google algo.
And Google better than any White House, knows how to spin, spin , spin!
*The Google Bomb is an exploit of an important piece of Google's positioning formula. Because the aforementioned searches were not competitive they were able to position as #1 for their term despite not having any text on page that says "miserable failure", or "waffler. This, many believe to be reason to list your keyword in the links that come into your site.
