After the first two salvos in a $300 Million ad campaign, launched to soften and redefine Microsoft’s image, failed to connect despite making use of comedian Jerry Seinfeld and former Microsoft CEO and world’s richest geek Bill Gates, Microsoft has been pushing a slew of new ads in recent months. And arguably, not one of [...]

I already wrote in detail about Cuil’s branding crimes last week.
Then an interview by Silicon Alley Insider’s Peter Kafka with Cuil’s CEO  Tom Costello today reminded us of everything that went wrong with the would-be Google competitor’s lauch, as well as everything that is still wrong with it.
While apparently the outages of the first days [...]

Yesterday’s launch of would-be Google search killer "Cuil", dreamed up by several ex-Googlers with $33M in funding, may have been a lesson in launch catastrophe.
But even more problematic than the apparently relatively poor search results and availability outages (Cuil had after all boasted of a larger search index than Google), were the crimes against branding [...]

Microsoft’s desperate attempts at purchasing all or part of Yahoo in recent months has highlighted the deep and ongoing branding mess that Redmond finds itself in.
So bad have things gotten that this fact was acknowledged in no less than MSFT’s internal email on how to get its listing Internet division to profitability:

… 4. [...]

OK, this isn’t the post I meant to write, but the (pseudo-)developments are simply happening too fast to catch one’s breath.
Today, Microsoft apparently walked away from a Yahoo deal more thoroughly than they previously had, which in itself makes little sense and proves how much Ballmer and Co. have kept themselves in suspended animation during [...]

It’s been 10 days since Microsoft-Yahoo deal was called off by Steve Ballmer, and in the days that followed the commentary and speculation has been churning at record pace.
Several times last week I was tempted to write this post, only to hold off for a while longer because I wanted to write something for my [...]