[anorwell]

The tone of this article bothers me. There are some smart people working at Microsoft. The level of discussion is higher than "Hey, google made a thing, we need the same thing."

Like the article points out, Microsoft has no shortage of utterances due to their acquisition of Tellme. Why, then, do they need to mine utterances with Bing 411? (Assuming they don't--I'm sure they do.) Bing 411 is a genuinely useful service that adds value to the Bing brand. It needs no additional reason to exist.

All this aside, the article is factually incorrect. It implies that localeze was contracted to provide Bing 411. In fact, localeze provides listings (according to the press release the article links), and are presumably one of many listing providers used. Microsoft/Tellme provide the actual Bing 411 service. I don't know for sure, but Tellme's (now Microsoft's) 1-800-555-TELL number almost definitely predates GOOG-411.

[e40]

> Why, then, do they need to mine utterances with Bing 411?

I think the point of the article is that they don't need to mine utterences with Bing 411, and that they merely did the service to compete with Google, without knowing why Google made the service in the first place.

[headShrinker]

I think Microsoft has very smart people but they don't have much control and the people at the top are more marketing and less genius and innovation. There is no shortage of examples of Microsoft doing just what you said, do it poorly and it flops. Microsoft's big successes where mostly do to masterful marketing, and less because the product was truly innovative. All that in mind, Photosynth still blows my mind.

[danilocampos]

> The tone of this article bothers me.

I stopped at being presented with a dictionary definition for the word parable, down to the syllable guide thingie.

Come on, now. Respect your audience's intelligence a little bit.