Will Microsoft become an advertising company?
Steve Ballmer is running around talking about how Microsoft is going to be a major seller of advertising. Here’s what John Dvorak has to say about the idea:
Microsoft sees that Google is making a pot-load of money selling ads from search results and via other mechanisms. How hard can that be? So Ballmer is out tub-thumping for the notion that Microsoft will eventually generate half its income from selling ads. Is he nuts? That’s like General Motors deciding that it doesn’t want to buy ads to sell its cars—it will sell ads on its cars instead. Put an ad on a Cadillac! That’s just dopey—and particularly dopey for Microsoft, since Microsoft is a software company, not Vogue magazine.
For Microsoft, this is a potentially disastrous scenario: The company takes its eye off the operating system ball and goes into the flaky ad-sales business, buying up various companies and lording it over them since Microsoft engineers are the ones who know better. This is a formula for disaster.
Personally, I think that Microsoft should first do something about the advertising for its own products. Whoever thinks up the ad campaigns for Windows seems to think its customers are all moronic.
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