Brandon Live!

Ever since I built my first PC at age 11 (a scant 9 or so years ago) my family and friends have joked with me, “Since you’re going to work for Microsoft someday, remember to tell them…”

Naturally, I forgot all but the most common one, which was something along the lines of “stop sucking.”

Oddly enough, no one seems as surprised as I am.  It’s not so much that I’m surprised at the notion of me working for Microsoft… that seems natural enough given my interests.  What I still can’t believe is that it’s happening now. 

So yeah, I’m going to work for Microsoft/MSN.  And I couldn’t be more excited!!  I relish the opportunity to do something I love and improve the experiences of millions of users and work at such an amazing place with amazing people.  They’re even going to pay me to do it! 

What’s more, I get to move to Seattle/Redmond - which I absolutely fell in love with during my two recent trips.  Guess it’s time I learn the Seattle native language.

I’ll be filling an S/DET role at MSN.  Two points if you can guess what I’ll be working on

I haven’t used Yahoo in ages.  But this shows promise.  Why?

1) Search clustering and filtering (and pivoting around individual results) are all ideas that I pushed heavily amongst the Search Champs.  The fact that Yahoo is doing work in this area shows that they aren’t content to follow Google or MSN every step of the way.  They understand that to beat Google, you can’t just be “about as good.”  If you want to beat Google, you have to change the way people search.  MSN Search right now reminds me a bit of John Kerry.  It’s saying “Look at me!  I’m as good as Google, but I’m not Google!  Pick me!“

Also, Google can play around with “extras” because they’re in the lead.  The other players can’t afford to get caught up in the little things… they need to think big.  They need to, pardon the phrase, think different.

2) Yahoo is being more transparent.  Like Google’s “Google Labs” page, and MSN’s “Sandbox” effort - Yahoo is letting you see (and experience) what they’re working on.  On one hand, I applaud this.  On the other hand, it isn’t the kind of revelation I described above… But rather, it’s a necessity if they want to compete in this market.

3) The “AJAX“ approach rocks.  I love sites that update/change their content without having to refresh the entire page.  Hotmail needs to do this ASAP.

4) They bought Flickr… so they’ve already been on my good side as of late

http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/