It really astounds me when people think that Microsoft has to instantly beat Google. I think they're looking at it from the wrong point of view - They only real

It really astounds me when people think that Microsoft has to instantly beat Google. I think they're looking at it from the wrong point of view - They only really need to beat Yahoo at this stage. Microsoft are throwing $100M dollars at an advertising campaign, when you compare that to the tens of billions they were willing to spend on acquiring Yahoo for their search business last year, its a cheap investment. Hell, I'd wager that since they'll be recuperating some of the costs through search advertising, that the $100M spent will only be the beginning. I think we will all see more advertising spent in the future. If Microsoft is serious about search, this $100M is a cheap gambit. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that Google's users are so entrenched that they wont be able to steal any of them, yet they do manage to take all of Yahoo's users, that means they still would control essentially half of the search volume that Google would control. $100M for a glimpse at that outcome is cheap, especially when they have the cash reserves to do it. So like I said, they just have to steal Yahoo users, which then puts them in a really good position to outdo Google. If history has shown us anything, when it comes to technology & consumers, the more technically superior solution doesn't always win (eg, betamax vs vhs or IE vs Netscape)