Microsoft: no search engines used in 2020
By James • May 31st, 2010 • Category: Industry News
- Photo: Stock.Xchng
When Microsoft’s soothsayers aren’t making ridiculous predictions like they’ll sell 30 million Windows Phone 7 Series phones in a year, they make altogether more fascinating predictions like, come 2020, the way we search will forever change. In fact, the claim is a little more extreme than that even – the claim is we won’t be searching at all.
TechRadar reported that Stephen Elop, Microsoft’s Business Division President, told a crowd in Amsterdam that our conception of search will be altered so much that it can no longer be called that. At this Office 2010 launch event, he offered that, though search engines will constantly search in the background, our interaction with the results is what will change. As you type an email, for example, results will be given to you, as opposed to you having to search for information.
The slow transition
In addition to discussing his ideas on the future of search, he showed how he thinks the future will look with a typical behind-the-silk-screen futuristic Microsoft R&D video. Microsoft’s thinking around the Internet and its value has accelerated rapidly in the last few years, which was what resulted in Elop discussing search at an Office 2010 event.
As such, Microsoft is finding their cloud computing catch phrase, ‘we’re all in’ is more prevalent than even they thought it would be just a short few years ago. But that isn’t to say Office, or Windows, have taken a back seat.
The cash cow
- Photo: Microsoft
Office 2010, which is Microsoft’s big money spinner next to the Windows operating system, is expected to be a success, but not to the extent of previously released versions. Free cloud productivity apps like Google Docs and Microsoft’s own Docs.com have begun eroding at the classic desktop productivity applications suite.
Having said that, though, Elop explained that 70 per cent of Microsoft’s work force is working on cloud computing initiatives, a number that will shift to 90 per cent in the coming years. Like Steve Ballmer before him, Elop said ‘we’re all in’.
Tags for this article: microsoft, Office 2010, operating system, search engines, Windows OS
