I read today on Andy’s blog about the recent partnership announcement between Microsoft and Verizon. Sponsored search on Microsoft’s Live Search will now include a link that enables Click To Dial between the business and the browser. Since this is only available for sponsored search, I wasn’t able to check it out, firsthand. From the article, it seemed as though the partnership provided free calls from the business to the desktop, as opposed to free calls from the business to your handset. So, how does this stack up?

From a business perspective, I think it makes sense for all parties. I play this game with mashups all the time… take a new light-weight application, and ask yourself these questions:

1. Does the service make the business faster?
2. Does the service make the business more efficient?
3. Does the service make customers happier?

In this case, I think they’ve got three for three. The customer gives his permission, and gets
instant satisfaction. Not bad. More so, they’ve just radically lowered the time it takes to make the sale. The business makes an outreach to a self-qualified customer that’s waiting for the call, and it can’t get too much more efficient than that. And the customer is in charge of the interaction, its schedule and the mode by which it happens. In charge customers are happy customers.

From technology view, though, I have some worries. I think the computer makes a crappy telephone. (Sorry, if I offend all of you Skype lovers out there, but I gotta call it as I see it.) Where’s my headset? Click, click, ring ring… it’s a very aggressive and unfamiliar interface, for many, it not most, people. I’m sure my mother would be quite confused if the computer started talking to her. What does she speak into? All I can imagine is Scotty in that Star Trek movie where he picks up the mouse like a microphone and starts talking into it. No guarantee that the person on the other side of the phone knows that you’re calling from a browser… he’ll have fun trying to explain that one. Yes, there’s a certain percentage of users for whom the computer is a wonderful communications tool – and I suppose I’m one of them – but as a broad based endpoint? I’m unconvinced, and that’s after my fourteen years of VoIP softclient development. If Microsoft only depends on a browser based approach, I’m thinking that the upside is limited.

What makes a good telephone interface? A telephone. With mashups, that’s an easy fix. Click on the link, ask the user for their phone number, and ring it. Simple and easy. You could even have an option to use the browser for those 5% of our population that would actually prefer it.

What I want to know is how and when Microsoft will start mining all this call data. I suppose there’s an off chance they won’t, but only because they are still a few years behind Google. They will, at some point, to great advantage to themselves and their advertisers. Perhaps that’s why they (apparently) are going for the browser play, so they don’t have to deal with all of the call recording legal issues that vary per state.

You should check out his analysis of the newly announced Office Communications Server, where he concludes that we now have a world where communications and productivity applications are inextricably entwined. I could not agree more, which really hurts, because I although I deeply respect and fear the Microsoft machine… take your hands off of my Mac or die. Microsoft really has it right this time, and shows that they really do have a trick or two left up their sleeve. In fact, I will amplify Alec’s point : we now have a world where the business process and communications are inextricably entwined. At this point, only Microsoft and the Internet world have credible platforms for transforming the business process through communications technologies.

At the end of the piece, Alec talks about three strategies for coping in a Microsoft world. You can practice Aikido, and use Microsoft’s momentum to your advantage, you can go to war and hit them head on, or you can retreat and go vertical. Iotum likes Aikido, which I believe is the only decent strategy for any horizontal-looking service. If you have a horizontal offering, you better start studying O-Sensei yourself, because it’s the only way to survive. For the others, I would retreat and go vertical, very vertical, and very quick. Microsoft consistently fails in verticals, for an obvious reason : they ARE omnivorous, and verticals are all about focus. You’ll be safe there.

For the bigger boys, let me suggest that you go to war with Microsoft. Why? It will amuse me, and all the other bloggers. You will not be so amused, but just like large carriers who are busy hastening their demise with IMS, you don’t have very many other options.