Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Redmond will rival Google in search over the long term, however it will take more years and more cash.

Ballmer told a swanky dinner at the Churchill Club, in Silicon Valley,  that he didn’t like not being number one and had formulated a glorious five year plan to take down Google.
He said it will require Microsoft to find a way to fundamentally "change the experience and the economics" of search.

Ballmer said that it was impossible to brute force your way into any market.  He thought  cloud computing efforts were the key to winning the battle for developers, particularly Web developers.

He was a bit short on details about what his five year plan was or how he was going to enthuse customers away from services that Google is providing.

Observers at the talk pointed out that Ballmer told the Churchill Club three years ago that it would take five years to win the battle on search and he had not really come up with anything new other than a failed buy out of Yahoo.

Ballmer told the club that in a few years all billion mobile  phones sold a year will be smartphones.  This means that, like PCs, software and hardware will  separate.  This is good news for Microsoft where Windows will be better known than Symbian, Linux mobile and Android. 

RIM and Apple may have nice and profitable businesses, but they are likely to be niches, Ballmer said. X

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