Ballmer: 5 years to gain in online advertisement market

Microsoft’s Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has set himself a target. He expects that the company would take around five years to gain a bigger slice of the lucrative online advertising market. This market is currently dominated by Google and Yahoo! is making a decent progress on their own.

Ballmer was speaking at the business luncheon in Silicon Valley and said that he did not like the idea of trailing both Google and Yahoo! in this market but believed that they are on track to snatch away the lead from the dominating players in this segment.

He said in a statement: “I don’t think you will see some overnight transformation. It is going to have to be longer term. It makes sense for us to talk about five years.”

The company is betting huge on the internet services market and wants to make more money from online advertisement. Microsoft is investing heavily in their Windows Live platform and many of these services are expected to be available for public use by the end of the year.

As per market reports, Microsoft has plans to spend an additional $2 billion in the year starting in July in this market with most of the efforts going toward building an ad-supported online business.