With Microsoft mum, analysts mull next moves for Live Search

Its image search results keep growing as users scroll, eliminating the need to click to the next page. Video search thumbnails start playing when the user mouses over them. Microsoft has also launched specialized searches for health and medical information and added some fun features for the celebrity-obsessed.

But nobody knows about that, Sullivan said.

"What's Live Search? You don't even know that it's Microsoft," he said, recommending Microsoft raze the Live brand and rename it Microsoft Search.

In the meeting with employees, Ballmer acknowledged that Microsoft needed to invest in marketing the brand. But when Sullivan considered the idea of more ad campaigns to spread the Microsoft search gospel, he concluded that easing Google's grip on searchers would take more than a good tagline.

When people ditched AltaVista for Google, it was because AltaVista's results were getting worse, Sullivan said, and people sought out a replacement. Unless Google loses sight of its search technology, there's no real reason for people to break their habit.

Microsoft's strength in display advertising, its efforts with its Tellme voice search division and mobile search, and its presence in video game advertising could bolster Microsoft's online business despite its No. 3 position in search.

"It's not just about search, it's about changing the game of advertising," Goldman Sachs analyst Sarah Friar said.

As an example, Friar envisioned using Microsoft's near-ubiquity in the workplace and its recent acquisition of Fast, an enterprise search company, to bring digital advertising into new contexts beyond surfing the Web.

Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research, also believes Microsoft should look beyond search, perhaps pushing ahead with plans to deploy software over the Internet and to get marketers to use a Microsoft platform for mobile and display advertising.

"The problem with a definition of success (is that) when this whole acquisition thing began, it was beating Google, and I think that's the wrong battle to fight," Li said. "I'd rather see them hit Google where it's weak."