It’s no secret that those who are frustrated with the lack of competition to Google’s Adsense publisher’s program want to know when Microsoft will step up to bat? Yahoo’s publisher program is by invitation only and has been in beta since August 2, 2005.

Windows Vista didn’t even take this long from beta to release. And yes, Microsoft does have its own beta publishers program, which is also by invitation only with no signs of going public soon.

Now while Google continues to spread its Adsense tentacles over the Internet, the engineers at MSN Live Bing or whatever the Microsoft product of the month happens to be can’t seem to come up with a workable publisher program.

After a couple of years of toil at Ask, they simple gave up trying and decided to sign a long term deal to deliver Google Ads on their searches. But, Microsoft has money and Microsoft has the engineering pedigree and presumably are still recruiting the best and brightest (that Google has obviously taken its chunk).

So where is the Bing MSN Live publisher’s program? Still in beta. Still struggling with geo targeting, IP addresses and getting enough advertisers to deliver targeted ads to websites. If the new search engine Bing picks up speed and starts to take a bite out of the Google and Yahoo traffic, then what? You still need advertisers and publishers to make a profit. And, it’s hard to believe that only one company started by two students at Stanford is the only business that able to achieve this goal.

Filed under: Microsoft