In my review of “Naked Conversations” posted yesterday, I made the point that
The strength of the developer ecosystem will be as much a part of Microsoft’s future success as its image.
Lo and behold, The Register runs this article today:
Developers become advertisers with Microsoft
Google has given Microsoft something to think about with a seemingly successful advertising-based business model, but Microsoft can “out Google” Google with developers.
That’s the enthusiastic view of Microsoft’s recently appointed chief technology officer (CTO) Ray Ozzie, who believes Redmond can utilize MSN to beat Google and become the industry’s largest beneficiary of online advertising-based services.
If you’ve asked yourself why MS is giving away Standard editions of VS 2005 and SQL 2005 at its launch events, this is probably Reason #1. Ditto with why MS employees are encouraged to blog–the technical information they share is in many ways akin to Amazon or Google providing well-documented APIs.
I’m not planning to be part of the gang that tries to out-Google Google. It has been said that when elephants dance, it’s the grass that gets trampled. In this case, I think the grass is getting aerated. I plan to be part of the gang that helps small businesses benefit from the coming interest in them as search providers such as MSN or Google put a more local face on their results. Half the country lives in small towns, and half the economy is in small businesses. Here we go, just watch out for the elephant with the two left feet.