There's a fine line between cacophony and ear candy. According to Marketwatch.com, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer didn't mince words at a luncheon on Thursday, when he described Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) recent forays into expanding and capitalizing on its search audience as "cacophonous."
Cacophonous? Really? If that isn't the funnel calling the colander porous, I don't know what is. Cacophony is a word that has often come to mind when I hit the landing pages of sites like MSN.com or Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) AOL.com. I have nothing against the content aggregators, but when your home page consists of dozens of tiny carnival sideshow barkers posing as bullet points, you're not standing on firm ground to critique a company behind the cleanest, most practical interface on the planet.
Ballmer obviously wasn't referring to Google's landing page. His comments were geared toward the announcement that Google made during its press day earlier this week, introducing several new online gizmos and updates.
Microsoft is clearly threatened by some of the cacophony that it's hearing out of the Google bandstand these days. It's no surprise to find Microsoft announcing that the next consumer version of Office will be priced lower than the current version. Between Google's acquisition of Writely, its recent rollout of Google Calendar, and its Web-based software promoting its partnership with Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW), the dot-com titan is building a suite that will challenge Office in the coming years as a free, ad-supported platform.
Cacophonous? Try carnivorous.
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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a huge fan of Google, and it would be his homepage if not for Fool.com. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. The Fool has a disclosure policy. Rick is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
