I’ve been reading several comments on one of Microsoft’s newest brainchilds: Live Labs. In fact, I was sitting two rows back at Search Champs when Dr. Gary Flake gave the speech about Live Labs that included Robert Scoble’s infamous “edge case” outburst. Dion Hinchcliffe has the full audio here which is filled with all the usual buzzwords like “long tail” which tend to scare me away more than draw my interest.

I started to blog about this at the event last week and held off because it’s all just way too nascent right now to form any concrete opinion either way. Sure, Live Labs sounds like a positive move for Microsoft, but I want to get into the Labs and see where this really goes. I put in a request last week to be included in the future backchannel along with several champs and am excited about actually making something actually happen and not just talking about things. In fact, since I’m under NDA, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it anyway which is fine with me. Let’s get something going. Let’s move the needle.

I guess my problem about getting overly excited too soon is that Live Labs on the outside isn’t really anything but a fashion statement at this point. Only ideas and plans and goals, which of course you need for a good foundation, but compare that to say Google Labs which has been busting at the seams with actual products/services.

Nathan over at Inside Microsoft makes a great point that all us armchair quarterbacks shouldn’t do this:

… before you start comparing this to Google Labs, understand this: Google Labs is a marketing tool, it is not an actual team within Google. Many of the Labs products are developed in regular Googlers 20% free time, while others are just risks the company wants to keep as low-key as possible, while others are just theory products.

Live Labs is going to be mostly composed of people working 100% of the time, and shipping often (how many months between Google Labs releases?

Unfortunately the problem with this is that most people will compare the two because of the all too coincidental use of the word “labs.” And if they do compare the two, it’s a 7-0 game, set, match as of this writing in Google’s favor. Microsoft appears more like a follower than a leader and that plays into the whole Microsoft hater crowd that believes they don’t really innovate, they copy and dominate.

Seven products/services within the last 12 months: Google Suggest in Japan, Google Ride Finder, Google Web Accelerator, Google Video,
Google Reader, Google Transit and Google Extensions for Firefox. Yeah, we can talk about the quality of some of these creations — and we have on this blog critically — but the fact is releasing something is better than planning on releasing something.

Guess I’m a bit disappointed that Microsoft didn’t hold onto publically announcing the Live Labs until they actually publically released at least one product/service — whatever it was — to hang their hat on. It’s a bit like what they’ve done with the live.com and microsoftgadgets.com. Fortunately both those sites have continued to add content over time and are starting to fill out, so I’m sure that Live Labs will too.

What concerns me is that it’s one of those you only get one first impression deals. So let’s fast forward say 6-12 months when Live Labs has some content to chew on and what will things be like then?

I don’t know.

That’s why I didn’t blog about this in more detail last week from Search Champs, it is just a gigantic question mark for me. Microsoft’s more famous in recent times for coming soon shipping dates than being as agile and quick to ship as this Live Labs is plans to be. I am rooting for this to be a success.

I guess you might describe my whole feeling of Live Labs as cautiously optimistic. I am involved in the back channel and would love to be helpful in creating, reviewing and/or offering feedback on content that someday might appear in the Live Labs … if that’s even where it will appear? I’m not bashing the concept, I’m bashing the release of the concept without anything concrete to measure it by … yet.

Microsoft employee, Dare Obasanjo appears marginally impressed:

It’s unclear to me why we felt we had to apply the “Live” brand to what seems to be a subsection of http://research.microsoft.com/. I guess “Live” is going to be the new “.NET” and before the end of the year everything at Microsoft will have a “Live” version.

*sigh*

Dare has a compelling observation. People don’t like branding exercises, marketing speak, without substance and Microsoft is famous for branding efforts: Activex, .NET and now Live. The fact that they call it Windows Live instead of just Live is yet another bizarre branding effort.

It’s your turn. Are you comparing these two labs or can you look at Microsoft’s lab as something different despite the name?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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