HN Explorer

microsoft.com html title - signs of a company in decay?

7 points by vain ↗ HN
Microsoft.com's title is: Microsoft Corporation: Software, Smartphones, Online, Games, Cloud Computing, IT Business Technology, Downloads

Apple.com : Apple - Start

google.com just say Google

Even yahoo just say yahoo!

is this a contractor shortchanging microsoft or something graver?

-even oracle.com isnt that sucky: Oracle | Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together

11 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 35.9 ms ] thread
slater
Maybe Microsoft is just dumb?
matthiaswh
Their title tag isn't terrible. It's highly descriptive of what they do and not repetitive or spammy, albeit a little long. Other brands decided that the branding was enough, while Microsoft wanted to be more descriptive.

If you want ugly corporate title tags, look at the pages for HP/Palm's products. They always seemed amateurish.

TouchPad | Laptop TouchPad | TouchPad Computer

HP Pre3 | Business Smartphone, Business Mobile Phones

Palm USA | Palm Pixi Plus Phone | Features, Details

Palm USA | Palm Pre Phone | Features, Details

(The last one is for their "applications" page.)

edtechre
Yeah but something that long is best left to the meta description, not the title.
chrislomax
I would imagine that the keywords they are using in their title should really be on the relevant pages for their term. I always wondered how all the different sites worked to be honest. All the little domains that Microsoft have never seem to be consistent with their brand either?

I find their websites so detached from each other, the deeper you get into the microsoft site, the more the theme changes.

edw
Having worked at CDnow back in '98-99 and being part of one of the grand front page re-designs, I had to deal with every department (of a company of only about 350 people, mind you) that wanted a piece of the above the fold space.

• Operations wanted order status

• Affiliate marketing wanted a promo

• Corporate affiliate marketing wanted a promo

• The merchandizing people wanted…merch promos

• The bizdev people wanted ads and partner logos.

• Ad nauseam.

Balancing the interests of all these groups, who seemed not even dimly aware that they existed only to the extent that the whole thrived, was difficult. (CDnow was eventually bought by Bertelsmann and turned into a redirect to Amazon, by the way…)

I can imagine similar conversations regarding the content of the Microsoft front page title. And there's probably extensive internal front page title page kremlinology, where employees track the waxing and waning of various business groups by watching what the keeper of the page title deems worth highlighting, and in what order.

vain
I have worked for a few years with a company pretending to be many things at the same time. it was a mess of strategy and homepage. each department and each individual wants a piece of the homepage. that meant fecal widgets just showing up anywhere at random. The pathology wasnt restricted to design. It went deeper into the mess of css, html and javascript. And I felt very alone as amongst the very few who had a huge problem with the way it worked. I was kept out of meetings.
senthilnayagam
Microsoft is no more the destination for any of the skills claimed in the title tag

so they are using SEO for getting on first page on search engines :)

calebhicks
A decent SEO idea gone wrong.

It seems they are trying to draw attention to their homepage for searches for Software, Smartphones, etc. when in reality they should be choosing one focus for the homepage, and optimizing category or subpages for various specialities (Cloud Computing, IT Business Technology, etc).

AngeloAnolin
This is quite a subjective area for discussion. I imagine what may seem wrong to some people may be right for Microsoft and their products. Microsoft probably just wants to brand itself in the forefront of these technologies and they have not found a good keyword or phrase that would lump them altogether.
brudgers
Comparison of Microsoft to Google and Yahoo is a bit silly based on the fundamental differences in the purpose of their landing pages - i.e. Bing.com : Bing

If you buy into the Apple v Microsoft meme then maybe that comparison is somewhat meaningful. Personally, I don't buy in given their primary organization around B2C and B2B respectively.

It's hardly as if any of this has an effect on sales - and to the degree it does, one would suspect that Microsoft's title would drive more traffic to their site than Apple's or Oracle's - again, Google and Yahoo don't really have a comparable business model.

myearwood
Other companies are even worse - The title for Instagram.com is instagr.am