"Plan C" - Microsofts New Strategy

I wonder how many of us remember the Eskimo ad on TV, where they travel all the way to reach a small town in India... I think it was brilliant and yes without batting an eyelid, I can recall it was for Live.com search on Hutch.

How many of us actually use Live.com for search or know that it belongs to Microsoft... Does anyone say " Yahoo it or Live (live.com) it and the first link is my website" but yes you find people saying "Google it". Infact, I remember a Pontiac TVC (in the US) which spoke about the Pontiac G6 and ended with a line "Don't take our word for it, Google 'Pontiac' to find out!”. This ad not only resulted in a high number of searches for Pontiac but also, kind of closed the loop between offline and online advertising. The reason I say this, is cos, increasingly the laptop is becoming a part of the couch, in different parts of the world. Not to forget the ad did become a case study too.

Coming back to the topic, what is it, that’s different with Google and Live.com (Microsoft search)...
Besides, the obvious volumes, it’s the way the product has been positioned and advertised. Did you know, Live search has a lot of different features e.g. its image search results keep growing as users scroll, thus you don't need to click to see the next page. Its Video search thumbnails start playing when the user does a mouse over them. Microsoft has also launched specialized searches for health and medical information and added some fun features like for those who are celebrity-obsessed.

After, Microsoft withdrew its bid of $47.5 billion for Yahoo, its been working on something called "Plan C" which according to many is nothing but re-building and re-positioning itself or as Bill Gates mentioned (In Japan, last Wednesday) in a statement "at this point Microsoft is focused on its independent strategy."

For those who came in late, "Plan A" was about going solo, which was beaten even after a lot of effort and advertising on billboards and ads in magazines. Also, not to forget it acquiring an online advertising company "aQuantive" for $6 billion.
"Plan B" was a desperate effort to acquire a chunk in the search pie, by bidding for Yahoo, which sadly fell through.

Just two days before Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer walked away from the Yahoo bid; he outlined to employees a four-part plan to "build the most interesting position in the world in online advertising, media, and the kind of social connected search and media experiences that go along with that."

First, Microsoft must do the basics - a huge search index, lots of storage in the cloud for users, very well.
It must innovate in "quick waves" that force Google to play catch-up.
It must "change the basic experiences" of communication and search.
And it must gain scale.

"We have a strategy and we have ideas in each one of those categories," Ballmer told the employees. The promise fell flat with analysts who had heard it so recently before.

I really wonder and I’m just too curious to see the bigger picture of what "Plan C" is all about. In one of the interesting articles I read, Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research, also believes Microsoft should look beyond search and perhaps push ahead with plans to deploy software over the Internet and to get marketers to use a Microsoft platform for mobile and display advertising.

"The problem with a definition of success (is that) when this whole acquisition thing began, it was beating Google, and I think that's the wrong battle to fight," Li said. "I'd rather see them hit Google where it's weak."

I personally think, that it all comes down to the way a company positions its product and the way it markets it. Google, on the other hand seems to "just grow" and for those who remember seeing the Google Epic (a few years back) would recall and recognize its developments over these years.