Microsoft to Emulate + Extend GOOG Mashups

hit me baby
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Paris agrees with The Scobester here. Yup I could be one of those people Rick "Post-Money-Value-Blog" says of : “Even tho I/We know you used to work there…” except Im still more pro-MSN than GOOG - What are their engineers really doing on OpenOffice ? My excuse is a lifetime ago I was a Microsoft International Pty Ltd Product Planner (it was a nice summer month or so kinger and i sat above channel 10 etc around 1997-9 i think :D) pre-ninemsn incorporation : MSN's joint venture in Australia with Channel nine (with one of the two architects of that deal NOW working in NewsCorp Office of Chairman in NY on, well, "deals" i guess ;) Anyway, Channel Nine was and is the number 1 TV station downunder (which precedes scobe's business unit by many decades !!! but not sure if there is a connection with the MS branding "Channel nine" anyone know btw ???) My boss, ex-McKinsey David Harrington, vsmart guy, was a "First Ten 'Internet' Employee at Microsoft" (oops Ben it wasnt an interview question) working on the Sidewalk project, one of Microsoft's first big internet plays, which ending up being a billion dollar local city content investment which got them approx 12% of Citysearch - nice idea here btw minus politics (which I worked on for sensis later on in Aust as a defensive acquisition play by the only YellowPages business) then folded into IACI - Luckily within ninemsn I moved onto Carpoint. (just merged with carsales to create #1.au-to.superplayer in australia, ipo next year) Im waiting for the Global Meta-Car Search Player : We have meta-shopping engines which have already been bought, then travel (mobissimo, kayak etc), jobs (indeed, simplyhired, workzoo/ziggy) real estate (trulia) and local (oodle).. not to mention the vertical search health startups (healthline) and now steve case' $100m M+A Health fund (smart).. Its time for the verticals... cant be long till meta-cars...anyone know ??? Anyway I especially liked the second observation of Rick :

"Google’s plan of just giving away as much as possible and sharing revenue with everybody on everything is a dead simple message that everybody just gets. Regardless how evil or not you think Google is or isn’t, the message that developers are hearing is this: Use our stuff and let’s make money together. Head on over to the Head Lemur’s place where he pointed out some pretty interesting language in Google’s licensing with respect to content. Some people, like Alan, will hit the “you’ve been warned” button but the larger message: Nobody appears, today, to care. For example, I’m seeing all kinds of applications that use various mapping features, all with Google Maps, none with Virtual Earth. Licensing restrictions was the number one issue mentioned, the second being the richness of the API set. Think about that for a second. Even if you believe Virtual Earth is better or has better, the licensing is what gets mentioned, not the technology."