When did you start thinking about the developing markets?
About one-one and a half years ago. The relevance of market is very important for certain products. Live Search is one such. It was working well for the US market. Then, we thought we should make it relevant for the local market too. Then, the team started working on it. For example, if you type actresses, you expect Aishwarya Rai, Katrina Kaif, etc, here and not Hollywood actresses. We made it relevant for the local market.
Similarly, cricket on Live Search is different in India from the US. The search for top 10 songs will give different results in different areas.
The second thing that is unique about India is the prevalence of SMS. Searching by sending a query through SMS is much more meaningful in India, compared to many other markets. So we found out the solution to what you do if people ask questions through their mobile phones.
A lot of work on Vista was done here at MSIDC, but the product failed to excite the market. Did it disappoint you?
When we started the product, we were trying to push the technology on multiple fronts and were thinking of only big players. Soon, we understood we have to think of other players too.
Image: Software engineers work in the datacentre of Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt Ltd in Hyderabad. | Photograph: Savita Kirloskar/Reuters
Also read: Satyamgate: A primer
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