Instead of worrying more about its worthless search engine and confusing “Live” strategies, Microsoft is pushing ahead with it awards for search program. According to John Battelle, Microsoft is building up a new plan targeting enterprise customers “Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search”. Microsoft will be paying out $2 to $10 per computer annually, plus a $25K “enrollment credit”. To get the plan rolling Microsoft will have number of coercion measures in place that will make corporate employees use Live search/products. This includes removing all existing toolbars from browser, setting home page to live search, brainwash programs, and much more in corporate style. Can you believe that? Let’s consider a company with 50K employees that goes in for the Microsoft Live dose. They save at max $525K. Will such a big company really care about half million dollars? What about all the productivity loss in forcing users to use Live search whose results won’t get the users anywhere. What about all the time lost by employees in getting their old settings back. Who will pay for all the help desk calls from confused users? Any CIO who falls for this plan might be really dumb.
