Category Archives: Rants

Every so often I have to blow off steam. These are the results

What I Took Away from the Search Insider Summit

First published December 10, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’ve had a few days now to reflect on what came out of the Search Insider Summit in Park City. It was an interesting perspective: Avinash Kaushik telling us that the majority of search marketing “sucks”; Mark Mahaney prophesizing that search is poised for a big climb in 2010; Rob Griffin warning us the entire industry is going through the throes of change; Chris Copeland showing us that social media is inextricably linked with search activity; and Mike Moran cautioning us that CEOs and CFOs worship at one altar and one altar only: profit. If we want to sell search, we have to speak that language.

Adding to this, I climbed on my usual soapbox, arguing that we spend too much time with data and too little time with our customers. In the panel exploring how to balance qualitative and quantitative approaches, the panelists were asked how they differentiated the two. For me, the answer is this: Quantitative is watching the dashboard while you drive. Qualitative is looking out the windshield.

SEM’s Call to Arms

So, when you mash this up over 3 days and distill the essence, what do you end up with? I think SEMs heard a distinct call to “up their game” last week in Park City. Sure, there are tough problems to tackle. Marketers are demanding more from their budgets than ever before. As Avinash said, attribution causes many marketers to “cry like little girls.” Determining user intent and matching it in our ads is tough. Matching it on the landing page and beyond is even tougher. Trying to wrap our heads around the shifting tide of social media gives us all a migraine. And if our jobs weren’t tough enough, Google just gave SEO a slap upside the head last week with personalization of all search results. Thank God the bar was open after the sessions wrapped up.

But we search marketers are a resilient bunch. The people roaming the hallways of the Chateaux at Silver Lake didn’t look morose. In fact, they were almost giddily optimistic. There was a sense that as rough as the ride was in this boat we all chose to set sail in, at least it was heading in the right direction. Rob Griffin put it this way: “If you’re any good, you might not have the same job title or be doing the same thing in a few years, but you’ll be employed. That’s more than a lot of other people will be able to say.”

I’m Not Sure Where We’re Going, but Follow Me!

I look at it this way. The market has already shifted. And where the market goes, we marketers have to follow. Somebody has to figure this stuff out. And, as I remarked to someone over drinks after the sessions wound down, I’m constantly amazed by the number of people in marketing who have impressive titles on their business cards but simply don’t get the magnitude of the behavioral shift we’re in the middle of. Avinash is right. A lot of what I see in the digital marketing landscape “sucks.” We have to get better. We have to get smarter. We have to do a better job of listening to the people we’re trying to market to.

I know we will get better. Really, do we have a choice? And the advantage search marketers have is that we have chosen to work in the one area of online that has been an unqualified success. Everyone is looking to us as an example of digital marketing done right. And we’re looking at each other saying, “Okay, that worked. Now, what’s next?”

I Guess Guy Kawasaki is Never Going to Ready My Blog

According to Guy Kawasaki, I do pretty much everything wrong in a blog post. I write too much, I avoid numbered lists that are too neat and pat and I don’t try to condense everything down to spoonfuls of Pablum for easy digestion. Hey, I do eye tracking. I know that Guy’s suggestions make for faster scanning for someone looking for a quick information bite. But is fast and easy what everyone is looking for?

Blogs are where I work out thoughts, opening them up to the public. And a lot of those thoughts (like the ones last week, or my post on the Intel brain chip) don’t fit in nice little numbered lists. Sorry Guy. If you’re looking for a quick bite, graze on elsewhere. I prefer large chunks of partially digested ideas.

I think the Internet has jammed far too many numbered and bulleted lists down our gullet. I think someone has to provide content that a few people are willing to spend some time over and ponder. I want people to think a little. I don’t want a grocery list of simple to implement ideas that you can tack to your fridge. That’s what everyone does. I want to do something different. I think more people should do the same. I suspect the internet is carving our brain into tiny little pieces that are incapable of grappling with anything that requires an attention span longer than that of a gnat.

Look at the really great ideas of the world and the people who expressed them. Sure, there are some lists and quick quips (the Golden Rule, the 10 commandments) but there are also long essays and treatises. The world needs both.

Guy gets a lot more readers than I do, so I’m sure if I was looking for pure quantity, I’d do well to follow his advice. But I blog because I have a voice and ideas I want to share. They may not meet Guy’s guidelines for a perfect blog post, but you know what? I’m okay with that.

Murdoch and Bing: The Sound of Two Dinosaurs Dancing

This morning in Ad Age:

Why Murdoch Can Afford to Leave Google for Bing

The author, Nat Ives, reasons that Google traffic doesn’t translate into revenue for Murdoch anyway. This is true, but the logical conclusion that you can afford to kiss this traffic goodbye is seriously flawed. I’ll explain why in a minute.

Yesterday in Search Engine Land, Danny offered his thoughts on “The OPEC of News“. He approached it from the flow of information and indexing cycle perspective, and I think he did a good job of hitting the salient points. From the mechanics of the search space, Danny’s right, but what’s more interesting to me is the human behavior that sits behind all this.

The biggest reason why this is a stupid deal is that it’s out of touch with where the market is going. I touched on this in a previous post, but I’ll expand on it this week in a few posts that will tie together Enquiro’s past research and other seminal research :

Today – The Primacy of the Patch – Why Information Foraging is the Key to Behavior

Wednesday – The Mindlessness of Web Search – How We Don’t Think Our Way through Online Interactions

Thursday – Engagement with Online Ads – The Importance of Aligned Intent

Friday – Tying it Together – Why Murdoch and Bing’s Logic is Fatally Flawed

Twitter Declining? I Don’t Think So…

One item in this morning’s in box caused me to look twice – eMarketer, using numbers from Nielsen, stated that “Data on Twitter Decline Stacks Up.”

twittergraph

Turns out it caught the eye of Jim Jansen at Penn State as well. After a quick and flurried Twit-Talk with my friend Jim, we both agreed the title’s misleading.

If you continue to read down to the fourth paragraph, you start to find the article begins to refute itself:

“The decrease in visitors could mean either falling interest in Twitter or simply migration to other platforms, such as third-party applications and mobile access. ”

Well..duh! Through the rest of the post, eMarketer starts to show just how much Twitter traffic has migrated to 3rd party platforms. As Jim said in a tweet “Don’t even know why they are reporting it like this.” Why indeed? This is just sloppy and misleading. It’s one thing to attract eyeballs from the email in box (worked with me) but it’s another to falsely or misleadingly report research and drop the real picture down to the bottom of the post. I’ve seen enough eye tracking to know that the majority of readers would never get past the first paragraph or two.

Shame on you eMarketer!

Rupert, meet Reality. Reality, meet Rupert.

rupert_murdoch_tokyoRupert Murdoch’s rantings are so out of touch that they’re bordering on lunacy, or, at a minimum, stupidity. He’s mad that his old revenue model isn’t working anymore. Maybe, Rupert, that’s because we’re in a new era and people have changed their minds. It has nothing to do with search engines being kleptomaniacs. It’s people doing what they do..finding the easiest path to information. This boat has sailed, dear Rupert. You can jump up and down and stamp your feet, but the only people to really get made at are your readers. They’ve found a new way to get information, and unfortunately, it bypasses your monetization model. You are no longer in control.

Murdoch’s answer is to throw a subscription model in on all his publications and stop Google and other engines from indexing it and “stealing” his precious content. Hmm..let’s see now. The entire world navigates through search. Every day, billions of eyeballs go to Google seeking content. You have content. So what do you do? You lock Google out. And you try to lock customers in by hijacking their wallets and leaving them no choice. Let’s recap: Lock the world out and lock your customers in. Isn’t that what East Germany tried to do with the Berlin Wall? Let me know how that works out for you Rupert.

Murdoch’s not alone in this. Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson took Google’s Marissa Mayer to task for encouraging digital promiscuity. Apparently, Google has built a virtual “red light district”, threatening the stability of the sacred union of readers and struggling publishers. Again, maybe it’s because the readers aren’t finding what they’re looking for at “home”.

This denial of a dying industry is nothing new. History has repeated itself over and over again in discontinuous shifts in the marketplace. Yet somehow the behavior of the terminal industries never changes. George Bernard Shaw nailed it a century ago:

” If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.”

I guess it’s understandable, really. We’re looking at evolution and when the environment shifts, dinosaurs can’t suddenly decide to become gazelles. Somehow, it helps to rant, rave and rail against the unfairness of it all. Oh..and perhaps it’s also beneficial to call the gazelles names like “kleptomaniacs”.

THIS JUST IN…

Techdirt has a gritty little post showing all the Murdoch owned sites that “steal” content as an aggregator. So, apparently it’s okay to be parasitic as long as you’re on the right side of the relationship.

A Great Question: Why Don’t Big Companies “Get It?”

At our event in the Bay area last week, Marketo Marketing Director Jon Miller gave a very compelling presentation about how they’ve put a comprehensive sales and marketing strategy together that not only blows away performance benchmarks in his category, but outstrips what would be considered “Best of Breed” campaigns. At the same event, someone from a huge company asked who were the companies that were “doing it right” in B2B. A panel of very smart B2B marketers looked at each other, struggling to come up with a single name. Finally, Jon said “Well, I think we’re doing it pretty well.” It might have sounded boastful, but Jon had the numbers to back up his claim.

I’ve thought about that a lot in the few days since. Why can a small company like Marketo put together a digital campaign that integrates all the right pieces and gets them to click while a Fortune 500, with all their resources available, can’t?  Why are smaller companies much more likely to “Get It”, with a big G?

“Getting it with a Big G”

First, I should explain what I mean by Big G “Getting It.” When I look at the most successful marketers in the digital ecosystem, they have a unique ability to position themselves at exactly the right place on the digital adoption curve. They can read where their markets are going and seem to be there at the right time with the right offering. They offer something so compelling that adoption is a no brainer. These companies have a magical ability to combine the promise and advantages of game changing technology with a intuitive sense of what the market wants. Think Amazon, eBags, NetFlix & Zappos.

Hmmm..you say. No B2B companies in that mix? I would put Salesforce there, but after that, it gets difficult to think of B2B marketers who have found the sweet spot of the adoption curve. That’s why our panel was stumped when asked for examples of B2B companies that “Get It.”

I think the answer lies in the inherent nature of the companies that “Get It”. I suspect there are things that are natural here that it’s almost impossible for bigger companies to emulate. This follows up an earlier post about companies that seem to naturally benefit from SEO. As I thought more about it, I realized it comes down to a few common things:

Top Down, Bottom Up Buy In – Getting a company aligned and on the same page is just a whole lot easier when an executive meeting consists of leaning back in your chair and yelling across the hallway. There’s immediacy of communication and, through this, agreement, that’s intoxicating in a smaller company. If you get executive commitment to an initiative, the entire company can know about it and start executing in minutes if required.

Nimbleness –  With quicker communication comes nimbleness. Smaller companies move faster than big companies, and in the digital marketplace, that’s a vital advantage. If you get that rarest of animals, a small company with seasoned executives who have “been there, done that”, you get a tremendously effective execution machine: a company who knows what to do and can actually do it without dealing with energy sucking inertia.

Growing Up Digital – The handful of companies that I see have almost all grew up in a natively digital market. The online marketplace is baked right into their DNA. Another important point: they get technology, but they’re not star struck by it. If they’re chasing a social media strategy, it’s because they understand that it’s because conversations are happening and they need to be part of them, not because they’ve been caught up in the buzz and hyperbole of it.

It’s Not Marketing, It’s How We Roll – The idea of marketing as a separate department or discipline seems to belong to a past generation. In the successful new breed of companies that “Get It”, marketing best practices are so deeply woven into the fabric of the company that it’s impossible to separate them from all the other stuff the company does. They just do the things that are right for the customer, and everything good seems to naturally flow from that. If you want to call it marketing, fine, but it’s not the first label they’d put on it. They tend to use words like “culture” and “core values.”

Living Closer to the Customer – This ingrained ability to anticipate customer needs comes from living closer to the customer.  There is very little distance between everyone in the company and all their customers in smaller businesses. The CEO knows and understands at a gut level what the customer wants from them. And, if you have an executive that knows how to execute (rarer than you might think) you’ve got consistently happier customers.

Those are my observations after a few days thought, but this question of why smaller, newer companies seem better positioned to evolve in the new marketplace is one that needs more thought. If you could take a few minutes to share any examples of companies that you think embody these characteristics, I’d be grateful. Just add a comment to the blog and I’ll start compiling a list of examples to both share and to take a closer look at.

The Psychology of Summer and Fall

I’m always amazed how the turn of the seasons also seems to flip our frame of mind. As summer turns to fall, we shift mental gears. It’s a time for hunkering down, organizing our to do lists and picking up tasks set aside sometime back in April or May. I know that’s certainly true for me.

This summer was a great summer. I did a ton of biking (which seems to be the new mid-life pursuit in the online ad biz – everyone I talk to now is a road biker) including a memorable trip down the Oregon Coast and 2 Metric Century Rides. I also discovered, much to my shock, that I actually love landscaping. That has to be some manifestation of a mid life crisis, because I sure the hell didn’t feel that way in my 20’s.

This summer also saw me working on my first book – The BuyerSphere Project, which is due out on Amazon in a few weeks. I’ve been threatening to write a book now for a few years and now, I’ll actually have something in the book shelf to point to, proving it just wasn’t an idle boast. The book that came out isn’t the one that I set out to write, but I discovered that the author has remarkably little control over what comes out on paper. We go in with the best of intentions, but somewhere in the process, the book seems to take on a mind of it’s own. In this case, I started planning for a book about the psychology of consumerism and ended up writing a book on organizational buying behaviors. Related, yes. But it’s not the book I anticipated. However, I must say, I enjoyed almost all of the process. I’m also taking a crack at self publishing. I’ll let you know how that goes.

So the summer was productive, but it almost seemed that all the things I did belong in a special “summer” category. They seem separate from the day-to-day detail of my life. And now, as the weather cools, I’m settling back into the regular groove. I do so reluctantly, because everything seems more alive somehow in the summer. It’s like the transition from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz. For those 5 glorious months from May to the end of September, I visit the technicolor of Oz, but now, I’m back in the black and white of Kansas.

So, on this gloomy Monday in rainy BC, Canada, I’ll trudge my way through my list of tasks, more productive perhaps, but secretly dreaming of next year, when I can build another retaining wall!

Do We Need a Different Kind of Search Conference?

First published September 17, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Something’s been bothering me for the last few years. In that time, I’ve probably spoken at two to three dozen industry events: trade shows, summits, conferences and workshops. In fact, this week, I’m at one such event – a user summit. Throughout that entire time, I’ve felt that there’s a fundamental disconnect at these events. And this week, I think I’ve finally put my finger on it: the wrong people are attending.

Let me give you one example. Earlier this year, I was at a client’s internal summit, talking about the importance of “Getting It.” I looked at the 100-some assembled people, responsible for driving forward the digital strategy of this company, and asked the fateful question, “How many people here are senior C-level executives in the company?” Not one hand went up. Oops! Houston, we have a problem.

Where are the Actionable Takeaways?

Most of the events I speak at focus on giving attendees actionable “to-dos” to take home. In fact, I’ve been told time and again: give people a list of things they can do Monday when they get back in the office. That makes sense. Conference organizers have learned that attendees find the most value in these things. Yet I tend to ignore the advice of these conference organizers and talk about things like research, understanding buyer behavior and how this integrates into marketing strategy.

Increasingly, I’m seeing more confused looks in the audience:
“Where is my top ten things-to-do checklist? This guy is just giving me more questions, not answers.” This disappointment bothers me, because at my heart, I desperately seek approval.

But, in those sessions, after the rest of the crowd has dispersed to look for a speaker with a list of things they can do Monday, there are also a handful of people that come up to me and thank me profusely.  They seem to operate at a different level: a strategic level. I’ve seen this pattern over and over again, and as I said, it’s been bothering me.

Are the Takeaways Really Actionable?

Here’s the biggest thing that bothers me. My suspicion, borne out by several conversations with people that attend these shows, is that very few of these “to-do” tips that make the list ever get implemented. Months later, they still sit somewhere in a conference handbook, quickly jotted in a margin. Stuff just doesn’t get done. Why?

The people that attend these conferences don’t control their to-do lists. On Monday, their list gets put aside to respond to the all the other things they have to do — because they’re not calling the shots. The to-do list is being determined by priorities that have been put in place somewhere else by someone else. People come back from conferences with a list of “what” to do, but unfortunately no one told their bosses “why” they should do it. The bosses don’t often go to search conferences.

Less “What” and More “Why”

“Why” doesn’t come from to-do lists. “Why” comes from seeing things in the big picture. “Why” comes from “getting it.” The people who go to search shows already get it. That’s why they have the job they do.  You don’t have to explain to them why this “what” stuff is important. They understand at a fundamental level. But eventually they leave the conference hall, full of other people who get it and with whom you’ve swapped stories about how your boss desperately doesn’t “get it.” Monday, you’re plunged back into a culture where “what” is not aligned with “why.”

There are no easy answers here. Even if you have that rare CEO or boss who gets it, you need a fully integrated culture that is committed to executing at the highest level of “getting It” from top to bottom. Everyone in the company has to agree on the “why” and the “what.” And I’ve yet to see a conference or summit that manages to pull that trick off.

The Pressure’s On and the Cracks are Beginning to Show

First published September 10, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Some time ago, I wrote a column saying the fallout of the economic crisis would be a rapid evolution in marketing practices, speeding the transition from the old way of doing things to a much more dominant role for digital. In that transition, search would play a bigger role than ever. In the past few months, I’m seeing exactly that come to pass. People are serious about search, from the bottom right up to the top corner office. This isn’t playtime in the sandbox anymore; we’re suddenly moving front and center.

“I’m Ready for My Close Up, Mr. CMO”

The reason people are so interested in search is that it comes with the reputation of being highly measurable and accountable. This isn’t anything new, but lately, it’s coming with some additional baggage. Now that the C-Level is involved, performance isn’t being judged simply on a trial campaign with a limited budget. Suddenly, search is being tested to see if it’s worthy of taking a starring role in the marketing mix. And that is adding a lot of pressure to those of us toiling down here in the search trenches.

Search, by its nature, isn’t all that scalable. It comes with a built-in inventory limitation. You can only reach people who have raised their hand, indicating interest in something. Once you tap out that inventory, search loses its bright shiny luster. Search is effective because it’s a signal for consumer intent. You can’t use search to create intent where none exists.

“You Bid on What?”

Management of search isn’t very scalable, either. It’s a lot of heavy lifting and obsessing over thousands of tiny little nitty-gritty details, which, if you overlook them, can suddenly blow your ROI right out of the water. Just ask the PPC manager who forgot to set the appropriate budget cap and comes in on a Monday morning to find they’ve just spent several thousand dollars of a client’s money on a broad match for the word “lube.”

Also, the new breed of client is expecting more than just a limited tactical approach to search. Suddenly they’re using words like “integrate” and “holistic” because, well, because those are just the kind of words you use when you get to the top of the corporate food chain. You get paid the big bucks because you can toss “synergistic” around in a board meeting and actually be serious at the time.

Back to the Drawing Board

Right now, people across this great land are pulling out their white boards and sketching out the rudiments of “Marketing Plan 2.0.” They know something important has shifted in the marketing landscape; the economic belly flop has made it all too apparent that there must be a better way of doing things.  I haven’t seen any huge waves of budget pouring into search yet, but I know there’s a lot of talk out there, and much of it is about search.

Generally, I think this is great news. I’m the first to complain about the tactical bias of search marketing.  I think search has a much greater role to play — but I feel it’s only fair to warn search marketers that this isn’t going to be a painless skip down the path to a lucrative retirement. Anytime there’s a big shift, it comes with an accompanying pendulum effect. After being restrained too far on one side of equilibrium, the pendulum has to correct by swinging too far in the other direction. As budgets start to come into digital channels, including search, we’ll learn that, in many cases, it comes with a set of expectations that are seriously out of whack.

Survival of the Fittest

There are some search marketers that are ready, willing and able to take search to the next level, the one it rightly deserves. There are many others who will use impressive words in the sales pitch (words like holistic, integrated and synergistic) but fall seriously short on delivery. The path ahead is going to have a lot of casualties, both on the vendor and client side. But then, evolution has never been a particularly gentle process.

Just ask any ichthyosaurus.

Microsoft’s Talk vs. Microsoft’s Talk

First published April 9, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Not so many columns ago, I urged Microsoft to do something amazing in search. Last week, they did. But it wasn’t in a good way. I was on the road last week, and I saw three different things land in my inbox about Microsoft and its search efforts. With each email, my frustration mounted. Finally, Friday as I was sitting in Seattle airport, I couldn’t contain myself anymore. I sent an email to the most senior person I knew at Microsoft Search. The gist of the email was “don’t do it,” Yesterday, I got an email back thanking me for my “honest” feedback. Yet somehow, I don’t think it will make a difference.

Here were the articles I saw:

One – Google can’t innovate but Microsoft can, according to Bloomberg.com:

“Being the underdog in the Internet- search market has one advantage for Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer: He says his company can experiment, while rival Google Inc. plays it safe. ‘Google does have to be all things to all people,’ Ballmer said… Our search does not need to be all things to all people.'”

I believe Ballmer is right here, in theory. What’s happening in reality is something very different. But let’s hold that thought for a moment.

Two – Search isn’t solved, according to Arstechnica.com:

“We’re not at where we’d like to be,” Weitz [Stefan Weitz, Microsoft Web Search Team] began, and then dove in to explain that people are generally happy with how their search engine is working, until the data shows that they are not.”

Nobody is arguing that the 10 blue links is the pinnacle of search, especially Google. So it’s hard to disagree here. We judge relative to what we know, but we’re on the brink of blowing that away.

So far, Microsoft is saying all the right things.

Three – Microsoft to spend $100 Million in advertising new search engine, according to Adage.com
“Industry executives expect JWT, part of WPP, to unveil an estimated $80 million to $100 million push for the new search engine in June, with online, TV, print and radio executions.”

What? This was the email that drove me over the edge. $100 million? On Kumo..or Kiev or whatever they call this? This is wrong on so many levels, I hardly know where to start.

I’m not going to pass judgment on a search interface I haven’t got my hands on. I don’t think it’s fair to make a call on a few leaked screenshots.   But I will say that I’ve seen nothing revolutionary about this. And that’s the point. As I’ve said over and over and over, Google is a habit. You don’t break a habit with $100 million in advertising. You don’t break it with promises of search usage kickbacks. And you certainly don’t break it with a marginal and incremental change in the search experience. Microsoft is right to introduce categorized search. They’re right to explore changing the search interface. No arguments there. But this is not the time to draw $100 million in attention to it. Best case scenario: no improvement to market share. Worst case, the biggest drop yet, if the usability aspects haven’t been fully thought out.

If you accept the message in the first two emails, Microsoft needs to be a search start-up: bold, nimble, visionary, passionate and rebellious. And there’s no way in hell that will happen on the Redmond campus.  Bold, nimble, visionary, passionate rebels are nowhere to be seen.

The First Step is Admitting the Problem

So accept what you are, and more importantly, accept what you’re not. Tweak your search product to improve experience, catch up and try to stem the market share bleeding. There’s nothing wrong with that. And stop with the rebranding. Every time you do that, you’re breaking the established habits of your own users and giving them the chance to go elsewhere.  This strategy will blow up in your face.

At the same time, stop worrying about winning the 10 blue link search war and start planning for the next battle. That’s when the Google habit will be broken and where you have a chance to change the game. Here are the things Microsoft needs to start thinking about:

–       Stop worrying about relevance and start worrying about usefulness.

–       Understand that search patterns represent a complex system and look at ways to discover emergent behavior from that system. Use your findings to improve everyone’s search experience (this is an element in Stephen Wolfram’s Alpha project)

–       Use every signal at your disposal to interpret user intent in an implicit way. Embrace personalization, behavioral patterns, the social graph, task context and anything else that helps uncover what’s in a person’s mind.

–       Reinvent the interface. Embrace how humans follow information scent. Use more intuitive interface tools to allow us to choose, filter and drill into promising paths. And make it workable in much less real estate.

–       Make a better search experience personal and portable, seamlessly transferring from the desktop to the mobile device.

–       Hold Google’s feet to the fire. Follow your own advice and innovate faster and better than they do.  Because you’re right, it’s difficult for them to innovate and risk alienating their user base. But here’s the flipside to that. It’s easier for them to take that risk when there’s no strong alternative to go to.

Before You Say No, Just Listen…

If Microsoft really wants to spend $100 million on search, here’s my suggested plan. Take $20 million and fund 10 start-ups for $2 million each. Give them a one-year mandate to reinvent search. Take the remaining $80 million and use it to develop a TV reality show. Call it “Google Killer.”  Get Steve Ballmer to host. He can throw chairs, do the Monkey Dance and lead the audience in a chant of “Developers, Developers, Developers.”  I guarantee you’ll get a better return on your investment.

And if someone at Microsoft is listening, I’m free to discuss the development deal for the show. Hell, I’ll even be one of the contestants.  Call me anytime.