The Outlook on Bloomba

Mike Manuel, a PR person at an agency called Voce Communications in Palo Alto, did public-relations work for Stata Labs, a company recently acquired by Yahoo. Stata made a standalone, search-based e-mail program called Bloomba.

The acquisition by Yahoo means Stata is moving on from the PR firm, and in this entry on his weblog, Manuel offers an interesting and refreshingly candid post mortem from the perspective of someone involved in technology public relations. Among other things, he points out that Bloomba's fate in the market hinged in part on the relative ineffectiveness (Lookout notwithstanding) of Microsoft Outlook's built-in search tool:

"The [Stata Labs] technology was beautiful and they had a good blend of executive talent, but the company’s success was dependant, to some extent, on two very significant factors: First, that people would accept a search-based approach to email and second, that a little known company in Redmond would continue doing what it did best -- absolutely nothing."