This a subject I can easily rant about. They consistently, and I suspect intentionally, make my job difficult.

But the talk is about their new search engine, their entry onto Google’s space. There’s a lot of hype. You want my two cents? You should know by now my advice is to look to history. Companies, nations, people — all share the same resistance to change, the same urge to repeat their actions.

And so history tells us Google has nothing to fear for a few years, yet. MS, as a company, does its learning in public, at the expense of its users. It’s not a path I recommend following, but it’s been working for them so I cheerfully admit I may be wrong about it.

But the point is that this is iteration #1 in this space for them, and their first attempts are their worst attempts. It takes them three tries to get something minimally right, and their size means that “minimally right” is all they need for success as defined in most marketplace terms.

Does this mean Google is inevitably doomed? No. While MS succeeds in every market it enters, it doesn’t necessarily kill everything in its path. Check Intuit for example. It does mean Google can’t be lazy or complacent, though.