From amongst the quagmire of press interest currently surrounding the Microsoft 2007 spending plans, yet another 'leaked' memo has reached the world's keen eyes. This one in particular is conveniently topical to the current news climate surrounding the Microsoft spending plans and actually features Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer naming search behemoth Google as the reason behind some of the spending.
Ballmer defended the company spending plans that have recently sent stock prices crashing by 12%. "Throughout our history, Microsoft has won by making big, bold bets", he wrote to employees. "I believe that now is not the time to scale back the scope of our ambition or the scale of our investment, while our opportunities are greater than ever, we also face new competitors, faster moving markets and new customer demands."
Ballmer went on to become more specific as to the areas for further investment with the Xbox game console, Windows Vista and the Office 2007 line all spelled out in the memo.
While highlighting the areas for spending Ballmer managed to point the finger directly at Google and stated "Further development of AdCenter is key - our goal is to create the web's largest advertising network, giving us an engine that will enable us to monetise our services and compete against Google."
The Microsoft AdCenter is expected to launch this summer and is the Microsoft response to Google's AdWords, the search giant's multi-billion dollar online advertising platform. Microsoft aim to topple AdWords with the new AdCenter and establish themselves as a viable alternative for online advertising. The Microsoft AdCenter stems from the MSN AdCenter, with Yahoo! no longer servicing ads to MSN in the US but still supplying MSN Australia, amongst other countries. The planned rollout began in the US, which is now 100% operational, and continues to the UK in June 2006.
In response to the crashing stock prices Ballmer promised workers that the recent stock price fall was: "a lesson that the entire leadership team will learn from."
