Windows 7 Product Key Ballmer seeks to justify Mic

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer played online-services pitch man during his opening keynote at Microsoft;s annual Monetary Analyst Meeting (FAM), explaining why Microsoft believes it should proceed to invest seriously in lookup and marketing to remain competitive in the coming decades.Ballmer was pinch-hitting for Kevin Johnson, the Microsoft President in charge of the company;s formerly unified Platforms & Companies unit. Yesterday,Windows 7 Product Key, Microsoft announced it was splitting platforms (Windows and Windows Live) from On line Companies, and Johnson had decided to leave the organization, allegedly because he was not offered a CEO-level role. Johnson is not speaking at FAM today.Ballmer told the analysts and press in attendance at FAM on July 24 that the on the internet lookup and advertising world is now a “two-horse race” between Microsoft and Google. Ballmer said Yahoo was no longer a player, emphasizing that Microsoft has “nothing under discussion right now” with all the No. 2 lookup vendor which Microsoft has been attempting to acquire for the past several months.Ballmer reiterated that Microsoft considered buying Yahoo and/or Yahoo;s lookup business as “a tactic, not a strategy.” He told attendees Micorsoft wanted Yahoo primarily to build its advertising scale.“People say ‘you have to buy Yahoo,;” Ballmer said. “No,Microsoft Office Professional 2007, we don;t.”Ballmer said he;d never say never, in terms of Microsoft talking to Yahoo at some point inside the future. But now that it isn;t ponying up $40 billion to buy Yahoo, Microsoft has more flexibility in how it will “up the ante” in its competition with Google in lookup and marketing, Ballmer said.Ballmer spent considerable time justifying why Microsoft is willing to spend and lose billions to grow its lookup and advertising internet business. He told FAM attendees that Microsoft considers lookup “a killer app” for the new world in which more and more content and companies go digital. Search also is becoming one of the best ways for distributing and promoting new services, Ballmer said.Microsoft;s On the web Systems Internet business loss was about 5 percent of operating income, Ballmer said. But Microsoft believes that over time, that investment will give Microsoft a share with the trillion dollars of media, communications and marketing spending that will be up for grabs within the coming years — perhaps as much as “40, 50, 60 percent” of Microsoft;s current economic value, he claimed.Microsoft plans to up the ante,Windows 7 Ultimate Key, sharpen the focus and reinvent search, Ballmer said. The firm plans to build from its MSN,Microsoft Office 2007 Key, Windows Live and ad strength, going forward, as well as to find ways to make ads served through its platforms more relevant. He told FAM attendees that Microsoft is currently the tenth largest seller of advertising inside the U.S. today.There;s a Catch-22 when it comes to search and advertising, Ballmer acknowledged. The more advertising a vendor gets, the more relevant the ads served to consumers can be. But a vendor also needs more queries to be made to serve the ads in the first place. Ballmer insisted that Microsoft can get its ad relevance up even without Yahoo with programs like Windows Live Cashback, more and deeper vertical lookup work and new deals,Office Professional Plus 2010, like the one it announced today to add Live-Search-powered Web search and search ads on Facebook this fall.