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More Tough Love: LiveSide interviews Danny Sullivan about Live Search

Apr 29, 2009 7:53 am by Kip Kniskern | 1 comment

Danny Sullivan, Editor in Chief of Search Engine Land, conference organizer for Search Marketing Expos and Search Marketing Now, and all around search guru, took some time with us today to talk about Live Search, in conjunction with the upcoming SMX Advanced conference he’s holding here in Seattle on June 2 and 3. When we applied for press credentials to the event, we were asked if we would like to speak with Danny, and we jumped at the chance.

Danny has been vocal about Microsoft’s search efforts, and we talked about two recent posts of his – “Tough Love for Microsoft Search”, and “How Google Shot Microsoft After It Took A Knife To A Gunfight”, about Kumo (which just might, if we’re lucky, make an appearance at SMX Advanced), about Yahoo!, about why search advertisers are rooting for Microsoft, and how Google doesn’t like Microsoft, and doesn’t like to lose. It was a fun conversation, and we really enjoyed getting a chance to talk to Danny.

You can listen to the interview (about 24 minutes, 9.8mb), or download the mp3.

Some highlights:

Does Microsoft still need tough love? 00:00
Is winning at search harder than Microsoft thought it was going to be? 04:03
Taking a knife to a gunfight: competing with Google 07:29
Live Search cashback: is it changing the game? 09:16
What about Yahoo!? 12:18
Is the name the problem? 16:21
Does Microsoft have to knock Google out to win in search? 19:54
A preview of SMX Advanced 23:10

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JohnCz
Great interview. My take away is that this is a “brand” battle more than anything else. To pry people from another brand your going to have to offer something better. And on top of that, these days you need celebs to tout your brand to give it chance to make it part of pop culture. I can’t tell you how often I hear news people say “…just go Google it”. And the latest phenom, “Twitter” gets mentioned often on news networks. iTunes gets plugged during every American Idol show. And you’ll see Macbooks sitting on the desks of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. These are just a few examples of product “Plugs”. Frankly, I think the Microsoft Search technology/platform compares very favorably to Google Search. Unfortunately, “Live Search” just doesn’t work very well as a brand name. So it must start there.