Windows 7 Pro Ballmer seeks to justify Microsoft's

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer played online-services pitch guy in the course of his opening keynote at Microsoft;s annual Monetary Analyst Meeting (FAM), explaining why Microsoft believes it must proceed to make investments seriously in lookup and marketing to remain aggressive in the coming several years.Ballmer was pinch-hitting for Kevin Johnson, the Microsoft President in cost with the provider;s formerly unified Platforms & Providers unit. Yesterday,Windows 7, Microsoft announced it was splitting platforms (Windows and Windows Live) from On line Companies, and Johnson had decided to leave the firm, 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 web lookup and advertising world is now a “two-horse race” between Microsoft and Google. Ballmer said Yahoo was no longer a player,Office 2007 License, emphasizing that Microsoft has “nothing under discussion right now” with the No. 2 search vendor which Microsoft has been attempting to acquire for the past various months.Ballmer reiterated that Microsoft considered buying Yahoo and/or Yahoo;s search business enterprise as “a tactic, not a strategy.” He told attendees Micorsoft wanted Yahoo primarily to build its marketing scale.“People say ‘you need to buy Yahoo,;” Ballmer said. “No, we don;t.”Ballmer said he;d never say never, in terms of Microsoft talking to Yahoo at some point within 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 search and marketing home business. He told FAM attendees that Microsoft considers search “a killer app” for the new world in which more and more content and solutions go digital. Lookup also is becoming one with the best ways for distributing and promoting new solutions, Ballmer said.Microsoft;s Internet Systems Online business loss was about 5 percent of operating income, Ballmer said. But Microsoft believes that over time, that investment will give Microsoft a share of the trillion dollars of media, communications and advertising spending that will be up for grabs within the coming a long time — perhaps as much as “40, 50, 60 percent” of Microsoft;s current economic value, he claimed.Microsoft plans to up the ante,Office Pro Plus, sharpen the focus and reinvent search, Ballmer said. The provider plans to build from its MSN, Windows Live and ad strength, going forward,Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus, 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 lookup 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 within 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,Windows 7 Pro, like the one it announced today to add Live-Search-powered Web search and lookup ads on Facebook this fall.