Ballmer: Microsoft Will Beat Google Eventually

During an interview yesterday morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked about his thoughts on Twitter, Yahoo! and Google. Ballmer shared a lot of interesting information (including the fact that he has a twitter account under an undisclosed username for personal use), but the most interesting part of the interview was the CEO's view on Google's number one position in the search market.

As you can imagine, Steve Ballmer gets asked about overtaking Google in the search space a lot. Ballmer yesterday said that it's a hard question to answer, stating that really, there's no such thing as a 'good' response.

"There's no good answer to this question. If you say yes you seem like you're arrogant and if you say no it looks like you have no faith. So the answer is yes, someday," Ballmer told Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land.

Ballmer also said that Google's biggest asset is just that they were first. "The truth is, the number one thing Google benefits from is they did it right first," he said. Ballmer went on to say that search will be a bigger part of business for Microsoft going forward.

"I guarantee search is going to be a growing share of Microsoft's profits. That means it's first got to break even, then get bigger, but that's a growing share the way I do my math," he said. Ballmer said that Microsoft has also learned from Buzz, claiming that following the public backlash against Google's microblogging service, Redmond has been thinking more about piracy.

Read more about the interview on PCWorld.

  • nforce4max
    Microsoft= Big Brother
    Reply
  • RipperjackAU
    Round 1... FIGHT!!

    Ba, Na, na, Na, na, na, naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

    Dragon Punch! *smack* Dragon Punch! *groan* Hydoken! *grunt*

    Ba, Na, na, Na, na, na, naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
    Reply
  • Herbert_HA
    "The truth is, the number one thing Google benefits from is they did it right first,"

    Maybe the same could be said of Microsoft Windows...
    Reply
  • ryanjm
    Last line: "Redmond has been thinking more about piracy" - I don't think you can pirate google's e-mail service since it's free, unless they take all the code and just replace google w/MS logos. Logical conclusion: Piracy = privacy.
    Reply
  • Sabiancym
    etichilol, they did it right first. So let us copy and fail. Like we always do. I wish MS would die.
    So you can do all your epic solitaire gaming on a Mac??
    Reply
  • mavanhel
    There's no way Bing could be bigger than Google. Google has been around so long it's already a verb!!! Ten years from now people will still "google" anything. It's a synonym for "search", and Bing will never get that status.
    Reply
  • crom
    Google should be happy. Everything Ballmer says always happens in the exact opposite way. "The iPhone will never be big." "We will never partner with linux." etc.
    Reply
  • JasonAkkerman
    way I do my math,
    Wait, does your math work differently than mine?
    Reply
  • dman3k
    Herbert_HA"The truth is, the number one thing Google benefits from is they did it right first,"Maybe the same could be said of Microsoft Windows...Totally different...

    Xerox did it right first. They just priced it too high.

    Apple than copied it and like Steve Jobs said, "Apple is not ashamed of copying great ideas."

    Then Steve Jobs was forced to resign and he started NeXT. Which was priced like $500 more than the competitors but the competition costs over $5000 so $500 more for a system with a nice development IDE wasn't too bad.

    Then comes Microsoft Windows. Bill Gates was smart enough to sell Windows to every PC manufacture cheaply. Before than OS's with GUI were locked to it's own PC manufacture, like Apple is still doing. When will they ever learn...

    So that's how Windows succeeded. Not because they were first in anything.
    Reply
  • falchard
    I must admit, Bing is significantly better at being Google then Google is. BTW Apple = Big Brother. Microsoft = Used Car Salesman.
    Reply