Much has been made of some comments made at this year's Web2.0 conference by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Especially an odd sort of back-handed pitch for his own search engine:
“Take any search you want and try it out on Bing, and try it out on Google... 70 percent of the time, you probably won’t care, 15 percent of the time you’ll probably like us better, and 15 percent of the time you’ll like the other guy better.”
So let me get this right: Your argument is that people should switch from Google to Bing, because your product isn't specifically worse? Steve, are you unfamiliar with the concept of 'damning with faint praise?'
This would be like my grandmother saying that I am not a bad looking kid. Does that happen? No, every grandmother thinks her grandkids are the most beautiful in the world, no matter how homely, and they should. If the CEO of a company can't say that his product is the best, how is anyone who isn't biased supposed to think so?
Hell, if you are just going to make up numbers, which is clearly where the 70/15/15 came from, at least say that it is 70/20/10 in favor of Bing. What, you can't even give your own people a 5% edge? Hell, call it a margin of error, they are fake numbers anyhow!
This has to be one of the least inspirational plugs, and frankly, I wouldn't be thrilled if I actually worked at Bing. You expect your boss, the public face of the work you do every day, to go out there and at least say that you are the best, even if behind closed doors he pushes you to be better. There is nothing wrong with saying "we have work to do, we can always get better," but this feels like a defeatist attitude.
It's bad salesmanship, and it's bad leadership. For shame, Steve Ballmer
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