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In the past few years, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars to define the Live brand. Recently, Live’s market share has dropped 10 percent and Google has seen its market share rise by almost 22 percent. Current tally numbers put Google at around 51%, Yahoo! at 23%, and Microsoft Live at around 8%. Microsoft Live seems to be suffer from the fact that it has failed to distinguish itself from MSN and other services. It appears that Microsoft is also encouraging the use of its browser to use all Live services. One of the miscalculations that Microsoft seems to have made is its lack of support for competing browsers. Although users can use Firefox and Opera to access Live Mail and other services, they cannot use it for Virtual Earth.

Microsoft has also launched a competitor to Google’s Adsense. Unfortunately for Microsoft, they are having some difficulty gaining traction due to few people knowing about Live and using Live. There has been evidence suggesting that some people are not even aware of Microsoft’s Live search. It would be foolish to assume that Microsoft will throw in the towel due to these shortcomings. Microsoft is notorious for being relentless and pursuing markets until they dominate it. Just take a look at their MSN service. Although MSN is not as popular as Google, it has built up a strong following and is a very capable competitor to Google. Analysts agree that Microsoft has to spend more resources differentiating Live and getting the word out about live. No one really bothers to type in www.live.com into their web browser. However, once Microsoft does gain some traction, they will see Live become a strong competitor to Google and Yahoo!

Source: C|Net Article

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