First off, let’s get this out of the way:

Bullshot: adj. | The overly optimistic description of a commercial product by the company bringing it to market.

The phrase was of course brought to prominence by the incorrigible Tycho, of Penny-Arcade fame. It fits much of the lip-flapping done by technology and new media companies, especially in the case I highlight here.

Microsoft Says Better Than Google In Six Months
So Microsoft came out and announced that they’ll be releasing a new search engine by September. In their words precisely, they will be “more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google”. Microsoft, you’ve gone 5 years without releasing a meaningful upgrade to your flagship operating system, and many of your other offerings such as Windows Media Player have languished just as much. None the less, you believe that simply coming out and announcing that you’re going to integrate your search tool into messenger and hotmail that it will instantly be successful. If the lukewarm reception of Google’s recent addition of googletalk to their gmail service is any indicator, you may want to consider an alternative method for hyping your product.

Who knows, maybe they’ll succeed this time around. I still hold the Xbox and Xbox 360 as evidence that there’s a bit of promise left in Redmond, so maybe I’ll be surprised. What do you think? Bullshot, or Bull… uh, Bulltruth?