3 ms·

I'm afraid you're moving the goal posts a bit. When I was at Microsoft I saw a lot of presentations about how the advertising industry was much bigger than the

by wrs 16y ago

I'm afraid you're moving the goal posts a bit. When I was at Microsoft I saw a lot of presentations about how the advertising industry was much bigger than the software industry, and how MS needed to tap into that growth opportunity in a big way. I saw very few presentations about how a modest search market share would keep infrastructure costs lower.

brudgers 16y ago
I believe you are mis-characterizing my position somewhat - I stated that lower infrastructure costs are a benefit of smaller scale but I did not state that they were the sole measure of success. While I don't doubt that powerpoints about quick easy money from advertising were legion in Redmond, it doesn't change my belief that Bing has been a significant success for Microsoft despite the money being neither quick nor easy. The notion of measuring the success of the Bing team against the whole of Google is silly. Bing's success should be measured solely by the business benefits it provides to Microsoft.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  "I stated that lower infrastructure costs are a benefit of smaller scale" I find this statement confusing. Perhaps in terms of absolute numbers, infrastructure costs are less at smaller scale, but as a percentage of revenue, larger scale usually shows increased infrastructure leverage, until you get to Microsoft/Google/Facebook size, and start designing your own Servers, Power Supplies, Storage, etc... It's completely reasonable to compare companies against each other to determine their success - particularly when being the leader gives you network-effect benefits.
  - brudgers 16y ago
    Measuring costs with actual dollars rather than percentage signs is often the best way to judge the bottom line. Yes, relative infrastructure cost tend to go down at a larger scale - assuming that revenues increase in proportion to the infrastructure added, which may not necessarily be the case with Bing and advertising. It is also important to acknowledge the opportunity costs for Microsoft that scaling Bing might entail, e.g. is infrastructure more profitably used for cloud services or search? Does an advertising revenue model interfere with the necessary trust which underpins Microsoft's business relationships with enterprise customers? I am not saying it is unreasonable to compare Microsoft with Google at the corporate level - but using Bing and Google Search as the primary criterion for such a comparison is a category mistake.

by wrs 16y ago

brudgers 16y ago

I believe you are mis-characterizing my position somewhat - I stated that lower infrastructure costs are a benefit of smaller scale but I did not state that they were the sole measure of success. While I don't doubt that powerpoints about quick easy money from advertising were legion in Redmond, it doesn't change my belief that Bing has been a significant success for Microsoft despite the money being neither quick nor easy. The notion of measuring the success of the Bing team against the whole of Google is silly. Bing's success should be measured solely by the business benefits it provides to Microsoft.

ghshephard 16y ago
"I stated that lower infrastructure costs are a benefit of smaller scale" I find this statement confusing. Perhaps in terms of absolute numbers, infrastructure costs are less at smaller scale, but as a percentage of revenue, larger scale usually shows increased infrastructure leverage, until you get to Microsoft/Google/Facebook size, and start designing your own Servers, Power Supplies, Storage, etc... It's completely reasonable to compare companies against each other to determine their success - particularly when being the leader gives you network-effect benefits.
- brudgers 16y ago
  Measuring costs with actual dollars rather than percentage signs is often the best way to judge the bottom line. Yes, relative infrastructure cost tend to go down at a larger scale - assuming that revenues increase in proportion to the infrastructure added, which may not necessarily be the case with Bing and advertising. It is also important to acknowledge the opportunity costs for Microsoft that scaling Bing might entail, e.g. is infrastructure more profitably used for cloud services or search? Does an advertising revenue model interfere with the necessary trust which underpins Microsoft's business relationships with enterprise customers? I am not saying it is unreasonable to compare Microsoft with Google at the corporate level - but using Bing and Google Search as the primary criterion for such a comparison is a category mistake.