Microsoft to Run a Massive Bing TV Campaign in the UK

The Guardian UK is reporting that Microsoft Bing is preparing to launch a massive TV ad campaign aimed at challenging Google’s dominance in the UK search market. According to the report, the series of  Bing promotional TV ads is set to begin airing this week and will be promoting Bing as a “decision engine.”
Microsoft has contracted the services of ad agency JWT. It aims to show how Bing simplifies the “information overload” that accompanies the results of  other search engines – obviously hitting on Google.

Microsoft’s UK managing director Ashley Highfield said that  people worldwide may have forgotten that there is an alternative search engine.

“People feel overawed by the internet and what they turn up when they are searching,” said Highfield.

The said TV ad campaign feature ordinary people asking for information and getting their answers from Bing, will run for a month and then on a two-week bursts until Mid-June.  Backing up the Bing TV ad campaign is an equally massive digital campaign across Microsoft’s network and other media including social networking sites.

It looks like Microsoft is on the final stretch of its promotional campaign for Bing and is now desperate to gain more users even if it cost the company around $2 billion.

This is clearly stated by Mr. Highfield with the following statement:

“It is a battle not just of mind but of heart as well. We are wanting to make an emotional connection – we are ploughing a different furrow here.”

Google Buys Online Collaboration Operator DocVerse

Google seems to be prepping up its online collaboration and cloud computing tools – Google Docs for the big league. Just recently, Google Docs supported uploading fo files from your computer and sharing that files with people you collaborate with via Google Docs. Now, something good is about to happen with Google’s cloud computing service – that is interoperability with Microsoft Office files. To make this happen, Google just bought DocVerse.

DocVerse has allowed true collaboration feature right within Microsoft Office and by purchasing this company, Google wants to bring in DocVerse’s technology. This is of course to encourage more people to use cloud computing rather than the old desktop application settings.

DocVerse will be bringing in plug-ins that will add standard Microsoft Office operation including real-time editing and online saving.

As for other good things that DocVerse is bringing into  Google Docs, that is yet to be known as even Google has not yet announced this acquisition. But according to the WSJ, Google paid a handsome amount of  $25 million to DocVerse aside from other perks.