If I were in Bill Gates' office right now wondering how I'd deal with Google, one of my first proposals would be to take a deep look at why Technorati is succeeding in the marketplace on Google's home turf: search.

Technorati has taken quite a bit of my search time away from Google and Live.com.

Why is that? Well, Google has the same disease that Microsoft has: it can't see small things.

Blog search is a small thing.

Not enough users to get product managers at Microsoft or Google excited. Instead they look at the big audiences and the big money.

I can just hear Eric Schmidt at Google telling his troops: "let's go after Microsoft, cause that's where the money and users are."

And I can hear Bill Gates at our offices telling us "let's go after Search, cause that's where the money and the users are."

In the meantime Technorati is sticking its tongue out at both of us saying "you suckers, you can't see the small things and the small things are important."

Technorati is a proof case that Google is vulnerable on search.

Now, it's up to us to start seeing the small things. Give Dave Sifry a call. He'll show the way. Tom Foremski of ZDNet sees it.