2 posts and columns on The Matrix

Guns, Lots of Guns: A Video of Microsoft's Bing Visual Search, Aiming Right at Google

in News on September 15, 2009 at 2:52 am PT

With all the Microsoft employees tweeting about Bing 2.0 last week, especially its new Visual Search offering, launched yesterday, BoomTown thought it might be better just to show it in action. Think of that scene in “The Matrix” when Neo asks for “guns, lots of guns,” and you have a good idea of what it looks like. Microsoft is going to need a lot more of this kind of innovative firepower if it hopes to have a chance of competing in search against Google.
MatrixWeNeedGuns-20080503-084716

Will Tough-Talking Bartz Reorg Yahoo Soon and Finally Blue-Pill the "Matrix"?

in News on February 9, 2009 at 10:00 am PT

My favorite anecdote collected so far about new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is the one in which she called together two separate groups of execs who were direct reports of former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker. Bartz, several sources recounted, went around the table and asked them one by one what they actually did, making various outspoken comments along the way about management. Stories like this about Bartz’s take-charge style have been ricocheting through Yahoo as she navigates the troubled company to come up with a plan to revive it. But of all the various things many employees I have talked to hope she does first is dump the “matrix” organizational structure that many at Yahoo have grown to despise.