This article comes from Forbes.com, written by Shel Israel. It presents some of Microsoft's efforts in contextual search and human-computer interaction. Compiled by Huxiu:
Whenever I ask a Microsoft employee how the company is doing, the answers often make it seem like they believe the company is still where it was in 1999. They can quickly throw out dazzling numbers:
· Cash reserve of $77 billion
· Over a billion Windows users
· 300 million Skype users with daily call durations reaching 2 billion minutes
· Dominating living room electronics, except for TVs
· Leading in productivity software, second only to Google in the search market
The scale of the company is certainly important, but these figures haven't masked the widespread impression of Microsoft's decline. Microsoft is no longer seen as a cool company. It lacks innovation and has little to offer in the rapidly evolving mobile technology sector, though it does have an advantage in desktop software. However, the fact remains that PC software is on the decline. Microsoft’s most recent major product launch was the original Surface tablet and Office 365. To put it nicely, both products performed lukewarmly.
However, this software giant also shows signs of fundamental changes taking place, which have been brewing for quite some time. Recently, Microsoft reorganized into two new business units: services and devices, making it look more like a primary competitor to Google and Apple rather than the old stodgy enterprise software company. Microsoft's second CEO, Steve Ballmer, has announced his retirement plan, and rumors persist that Alan Mulally will take over, who successfully led Ford Motor Company into a new era in terms of product, culture, and brand image, partly due to wise use of social media, reaching new customer groups.
I recently co-authored a book titled "The Age of Context," in which we discussed how mobile devices, social media, sensors, data, and geo-location technologies use technology to change people's relationships. When Bing offered to sponsor the book, I was surprised. I clearly stated that I would focus on describing their competitor Google in the book, and Bing had no editorial control over the content. They agreed, with only one request: that we meet with some members of the Bing team to see if Bing had any technology that readers would find interesting or valuable.
In conversations with Microsoft employees, our previous view — that this company lacked cool employees and those willing to collaborate — diminished somewhat. We found several Microsoft employees who were open about the challenges they faced and the products they planned to bring to market. Stefan Weitz, a key member leading the Bing team, was one of them. His willingness to wear Google Glass for a photo shoot embodies a new mindset within Microsoft, where employees no longer think Microsoft can simply buy or destroy all competing companies.
In the book, we mentioned some of Microsoft's technical products, including Xbox, Kinect, and Blink. But what truly caught our attention was Microsoft's Satori (Enlightenment), in which Weitz played a crucial role during its development over the past few years. In Buddhism, enlightenment, or "Prajñā" (enlightenment), is the first step toward great compassion and bliss.
Weitz told me that Microsoft Satori is the result of many years of quiet introspection within the company. Its goal is, for example, to help people find the right wall color for a room, or understand dolphin migration patterns. Satori uses Bing's technological capabilities to read the content of 10 billion websites and integrates it with data from key partners such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Foursquare, creating a copy of physical world data. Microsoft collects and stores more data than Google, and Bing appears across all of Microsoft's product collaborations, making Bing more open than Google. This is an extremely ambitious project, deploying large-scale machine learning technology. Microsoft is attempting to recreate the entire physical world, everything in it, along with the relationships between these things, and aims to keep all of this data up-to-date.
When you're planning dinner with a friend on Facebook, a system driven by Satori technology can find a night when you both are free and suggest restaurants convenient for both of you, based on traffic predictions for the day of dining. It could also be deployed on mobile devices and wearable devices, allowing you to obtain search results through gestures and voice. If you hear a symphony or rap song you like while driving, you can inquire using natural language, and the system will answer in the same manner.
Weitz changed my impression of Microsoft executives. He never spoke ill of competitors and openly admitted there were things Microsoft needed to do in many directions. He viewed the resources Microsoft currently possesses as a starting point, acknowledging that the company needs to catch up in certain areas.
Weitz recently appeared at a seminar wearing Google Glass and was happy to let me take a picture of him wearing a competitor's much-hyped product. He didn't directly say whether Microsoft's newly established device division would release a competing digital glasses product. However, he clearly stated that Microsoft is determined to become a significant player in the wearable device market. Compared to Bing, Satori has more "navigation" attributes but relies on search technology. Weitz argued that this technical field is more open than some people think. He said that since Bing launched four years ago, its market share has grown from 4% to 30%, making it the only search engine to gain market share from Google.
"The context age you speak of is still in its early stages and will take a long time. Many companies will emerge in the future, and today's market leaders may not necessarily be the last ones laughing." Regarding the relationship between humans and machines, he believes humans are entering a "naturalistic era".
"People now understand computers, but until now, these computers didn’t understand us humans. The contextual technology we are discussing now aims to trigger a transformation, allowing technology to start understanding individuals. The interaction process is becoming natural. You don't need to reintroduce yourself every time you use your computer." He told me.
Weitz mentioned the enormous and rapid changes in the tech industry. Less than ten years ago, Facebook was just a tool for fraternity boys at American universities to find dates, and Twitter didn't even exist back then.
"In the past five years, we've started seeing sensor-based applications spreading on the internet, like Foursquare and Highlight. The increase in data volume is because of this. The ubiquity of data might be the most important point. A simple status update includes a large amount of personal data. This largely changes what people can do with technology, and vice versa."
The continuously developing Bing interactive technology involves three of the five human senses: vision, where people use gestures to operate searches; sound, where people ask questions using natural language; touch, where mobile device screens use touch operations. Weitz indicated that Microsoft will someday "rescue" taste and smell. To illustrate how gestures will become popular in human information searches in the future, Weitz gave an example of someone cooking and wanting to follow a recipe, controlling page turns with gestures. This multi-modal operation is helpful for mobile users and those using wearable technology.
Regarding wearable technology, almost no one thinks Google will be the only player in the market. Currently, nearly 6 million people are already using devices like Nike Fuelband and Fitbit to improve health conditions and assist in fitness, and this is just one category.
Talking about digital glasses products, Weitz said, "We want to bring our contextual search product to every screen, from the smallest to the largest. We want to embed it in every application." New contextual search doesn't require keywords but instead directly states intent. Microsoft has mastered data of 1.2 billion people, including data for almost every square foot of the Earth. "If you connect all the pixels together, the length could reach from Earth to Venus, and there would still be 7 trillion pixels left."
All this data serves targeted intent. If your sensor determines that your car has veered off the road and you input the letter "A", the system will assume you need an ambulance and send a message to the ambulance. If you're chatting with a friend at a bus stop and pause to take out your mobile device, Bing will automatically tell you where the bus is and when it will arrive, displaying it on your mobile device map. Other functions are also automatic. When you're heading home from work, it will automatically send a message informing you that you're on your way, set the indoor temperature and lighting, and perhaps play a song for you when the sensor at your doorstep detects your presence.
"Based on your location and what you're doing, your device will intervene in your next action. We can do better than Google."
The question is, how much better can Microsoft do than Google? No one can draw a conclusion now, but we all know: when competitors in the market vie for people's attention and payment, users benefit. Innovation continues to upgrade, and prices get lower and lower.