Friday, May 21, 2004

Two news items came out today pitting Microsoft vs. Google. First there was an item discussing Google's upcoming challenge to Microsoft by launching a search tool, code-named Puffin, to search Windows machines. Thus when you a racking your mind as to where you stored your latest kitty-strangling photos, just Google your computer for kitty-strangling and up they will come. Microsoft is not standing idly by, however. They're working on a search engine of their own which will be launched with the new version of Windows in 2006.

The second item reported on Bill Gate's interest in blogs. Gates took the stage at Microsoft's annual CEO Summit and spoke to his executives about the importance of blogs. He said that blogs would be excellent modes of communication for corporations and that blogs get "away from the drawbacks of e-mail and the drawbacks of a Web site." Microsoft has nearly 700 of its own employee bloggers talking up their software. This again pits Microsoft against Google because Google owns one of the leading blogging systems out there, Blogger. Standard Deviance is a Blogger blog, which should obvious given SD's daily server crashes.

It seems there may be a showdown in the future between these two powers, although if history is any indicator Google may go the way of Netscape. Lets hope not as Standard Deviance just got her very own GMail account (Thanks Blogger! Now if only my blog would load...)

In related news, yet ANOTHER article came out yesterday on Denton. This time he schools PR people how to deal with those snarky creatures called bloggers. Okay, for all you PR peeps out there, here is the way to a bloggers heart:

Free Stuff + Free Booze - Excessive Namedropping - Attitude = Bloggers Won't Make Fun of You and May Consider Reviewing Your Product

Easy, right?

Google, Microsoft Take Battle to the Desktop [Reuters]
Microsoft's Gates Touts Blogging as Business Tool [Reuters]
Q&A: Nick Denton, Gawker Media [PRWeek]