Each of us have only a few really close friends – three, maybe four. The number is so small because the time and emotional investment is so large.
This is the root problem facing Microsoft. I’ve already got a search friend – and his name is Google.
When competing against a juggernaut, you won’t win a feature war and Microsoft’s ‘Decision Engine‘ is just that – a feature war.
Last week, Freakonomics blog posted about a recent study on friend turnover. On average, our friend circles experience a 50% turnover every seven years while the circle remains the same size. In other words, we don’t add new friends incrementally, we replace our old ones.
Most of the time though, a new friend doesn’t tell me to ditch my current friend…rather, I seek out a new friend when its no longer working with the old one.
Microsoft may be able to force searchers to switch over time, because they’ve got the money to invest. In fact, we know that they’re willing to spend at least $45 billion to pull it off (the amount offered to buy Yahoo last year).
Most of us don’t have that kind of money to attack our respective Goliaths. For us, it’s a waste of time and money trying to convince prospects to switch when they are perfectly happy with the friend they’ve got.
Instead, we need to invest passionately in two things:
1. Building great products
2. Investing where the juggernaut can’t: connecting, relating, build relationships etc.
If we do those two things well, we’ll be the first acquaintance that our prospects call when things are no longer working with their existing friend.
{ 6 comments }
well said
I’m willing to switch friends when I meet someone whose goals and passions are closer to my own. Until Bing is able to prove this, and perhaps it will over time, this will not happen.
Especially since my old friend is so accessible (my homepage-which I’m not ready to change) and comfortable.
I’m holding on to my friends – google, as long as I can. I don’t like change, plus, there are so many benefits to google that just cannot be found in any other – so far…
This has been on my mind all day now…
I was thinking about what would make me switch from google to BING…and I came up with only one answer…nothing could make me switch.
Even if BING had some great functionality and did google better than google itself, there’s too much value for me to stay with the innovator. Google comes out with new innovation every day (or at least it seems that way) that make my life easier. If BING somehow finds a way to take google’s innovations and make them better, I know google will get there eventually too…as well as continue to innovate like no one else can.
In my mind, BING will always be a follower, and google will always be a leader.
Great point Brendan…Google’s track record for innovation has built a tremendous amount of trust. Trust that they’ll continue to exceed expectations in the future and reinforces the point of the post – why fight to displace a juggernaut? You money is better spent elsewhere.
Also – Without a simple toolbar to download it’s inconvenient
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