Microsoft"s failure to invest more in Internet search technology was a significant misstep for the company, but it is working to catch up, said CEO Steve Ballmer.
"People say that Microsoft does it all, but this is the case where we didn"t do it all," Ballmer told an audience of marketing and media executives on Thursday, here at the software giant"s fifth annual advertising conference. Then, like an eager football coach pumping up the team for the second half, Ballmer reasserted that Microsoft is still in the game and plans to win. "You"ll see a lot of good competition in the area," he said emphatically, at one point throwing his pen.
Microsoft faces an uphill climb to catch up in one of the Web"s hottest arenas. It is working hard to close the gap, but it"s so far behind that right now, it gets most of its Web search results from one of its biggest rivals: Yahoo. And this week, European antitrust regulators ordered major changes in the way Microsoft designs its software--a move that could hurt its ability to put new features, including search, in future versions of its Windows operating system.