Needless to say, Microsoft didn’t manage to meet that somewhat bizarre challenge.

“Microsoft may have been willing to spend years developing Vista, the long-delayed upgrade of its Windows operating system, but when Bill Gates was presented with a plan for finally beating Google in Internet search technology, he gave the engineers just 100 days“

When I was invited to Redmond to get a sneak peak of the new MSN search engine a few years back as part of SearchChamps, I left a little underwhelmed. I’m not sure how much more I can say due to still-existing non-disclosure agreements, but from information already published on the web, others clearly felt the same way. I thought that was a lot of potential from Microsoft Research, and clearly Microsoft has immense capability, and resources, but they haven’t really fired in the search space, as yet.

Are Microsoft the new IBM, and Google the new Microsoft?

Or are MS waiting for Vista to provide leverage?

They’ve been a little quiet of late. A little too quiet. As the article wisely states: “Don’t underestimate Microsoft”.

If there’s one prediction I’d make this year, it would be that this is the year that the MS search beast wakes.

Or maybe next year