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Microsoft Works on Search Capabilities
bl8n8r writes "Microsoft is betting millions that someday it will be as well known for search as Google is. Some of its efforts to simplify search on the Internet will soon be in place. The new version of Microsoft's MSN Internet service, available this winter, will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures. For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."
The new version of Microsoft's MSN Internet service, available this winter, will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures
Hmmm. Interesting. I have seen a number of new MS bots trolling all over our lab site for the past two months grabbing every image they can.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I mean really, it seems like everytime M$ comes out with something new, they tell us it will be the second coming of Christ. C#, .NET, etc. I mean, when are we gonna learn that M$ touting a new technology as the best thing ever isn't newsworthy.
user: Okay.. search for that Kubrick movie 'Lolita'..
WebClippy: It appears you are searching for kiddie pr0n.
Here are some suggestions:
[ ] Send an automated confession to the FBI
[ ] Format your hard drive
[ ] All of the above
If you've ever visited the MSN portal more than a handful of times in a two-week period, you'd know that:
(1) The search capabilities are horrible; Google is much better.
(2) The "news" story titles are misleading and the stories are frequently repeated over the course of a week; Yahoo! is much better.
Once upon a time, businesses recognized their core competencies and did what they do best, and let other companies handle the things that those companies are good at. Once again, Microsoft chooses not to apply this conventional wisdom to their MSN portal
Remember Microsoft Bob?
William
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
Microsoft? Search experts?
.NET...)
Has anybody here used the awful search interface they put up on MSDN a couple of months ago? Its hideous. It takes twice as long to find anything as its predecessor did. Googling with site:msdn.microsoft.com is often the only way of finding some documents (I had to do that to find out any information on programming NT Services without using
Searching for a name of one of their programs ("dr watson") doesn't turn up any information on it in the knowledge base. You have to search for 'drwtsn32' to get anywhere, despite the full name of the program being mentioned in the articles about it.
Yeah, great search interface. Really inspires my confidence.
That would be cool though. I've often found a cute girl in porn and it would be nice to search the web for all other free pictures of her.
Yes, Microsoft will compete with Google someday. This shows their on the right track: We Can't find orselves!
insert sig here
as well known for search as Google is
It already is, though the quality of its reputation is far behind.
"Do you know Google?"
"Yeah, it's great."
"Do you know MSN?"
"Yeah, that piece of crap?"
But he said better personalization is one way to improve searching. For example, if MSN knows that the computer user searching for "pizza" lives in a specific ZIP code, it can deliver results of pizza places in that ZIP code.
That's exactly why I *won't* want to use this new search engine. If I want to find pizza places in my zip code, I'll do it myself, thank you.
Crap, if I wanted internet that logged into me, I'd already have it.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
It's extremely easy to change your search engine. Changing your OS, your office suite, and even your browser, require a lot more effort for normal users. This creates MS's lock-in. But changing your search engine is as easy as typing in a new address (and Google's toolbar makes it even easier for users).
We've already seen a number of big fluctuations in search engine popularity in the short history of the internet. It's not a matter of what MS does as much as it is a matter of what Google does. If Google keeps their search reliability high, and keeps users happy, few won't feel any need to switch from something they're already comfortable with.
For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background.
think of time saved in searching for porn!!
"I drank what?" - Socrates
It works much better than I expected.
I wish I was skilled enough to help out with the project because I think it will become important in the future and now that MS is after the same sort of application you can image what will happen.
The GIFT (the GNU Image-Finding Tool)
Wax on, wax off baby!
doesn't GIFT do the same thing?? .. thing being: search images?
http://viper.unige.ch/demo/
and I will tell you why: This is one of the few fields where quality matters over quantity. The average user, when searching google, wants decent results, not corporate sponsored bullshit.
You will note the fall of yahoo as an material example.
Want an example? Go type "linux" into the msn search engine. I'll wait. Now, compare those results with those garnered from google.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
..."to google" is a much nicer verb than "to MSN".
Given that Microsoft doesn't have the best history as far as impartiality goes, even if they did come up with a good search algorithm, how much would people trust the results?
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
CNN moved the story ... the link from the article is 404'd.
The article is now here.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
...will include a tool for retrieving digital photos based on images in the pictures
Wasn't it already shown that this technology is quite unreliable?
This 'tool' is not going to work, much like my Xbox.
Bull crap. Take a look at Mozilla! It's MUCH better than IE hands down. The fact that you have COMPLETE control over your browsing experience is just one plus. The fact that the browser does pop-up blocking all on it's own is just one great example.
Not only that, but you can even go further and get some Mozilla based browsers for Linux (and other systems?) like Konqueror or Gnome's browser (damnit, can't remember the freakin name).
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
But he said better personalization is one way to improve searching. For example, if MSN knows that the computer user searching for "pizza" lives in a specific ZIP code, it can deliver results of pizza places in that ZIP code.
As much as I hate Microsoft, if they made a good proximity search engine, I would use it all the time. It's one feature I wish google had.
They're throwing around all these inflated statitics about how many people use their service and number of searches and what not. It's all PR! The only people using their search are those that type their searches straight into the IE address bar and that's about 75% of Windows users I'd say. I've never heard anyone claim that MSN is their search engine of choice. Noone actually *chooses* to use MSN search... probably because it's not that good.
They'll have to iron out regular web searching before any of their gadgets and toys will be taken seriously.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Correct link to article (as if anyone reads them;)
"Here are your results buried within 100.000 ads"
The technology for the Semantic Web is good enough - people and organizations just have to be willing to add semantic markup. This will enable what I would call knowledge based search. Some good tools are:
HP's semantic web toolkit
Protege Ontology Editor
RDF and semantic web tools for Swi-Prolog
-Mark
They can just make it the "default" search in IE.
I can just see it, too... IE will "accidentally" resolve www.google.com to search.msn.com. And while the lawsuits are going, M$ will claim (as in, for marketing purposes) marketshare as proof that their search is better.
And when it does come out in the courts some ump-teen years later with Microsoft guilty of uncompetitve practices, Bill will cough up the $300M to google and "fix" the "bug."
I've seen this history before... I don't expect them to change a winning formula. 8P
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
I worked for AllTheWeb.com for a while before we were part of a package sold by FAST Search and Transfer to Overture over the summer. Overture then is gobbled up by Yahoo!, this all after Yahoo grabs Inktomi. The SEO market is in consolidation. Back after we were bought by Overture, there was a lot of speculation that Microsoft would buy out Overture, along with the Yahoo! speculation. In fact, each of the engineers with AllTheWeb.com were contacted by Microsoft regarding employment possibilities. One of my coworkers went to Yahoo! and i'm contracting now.
But I digress...
This is a market in consolidation. Microsoft throwing its' hat in the ring is probably a good thing for the market, like them or hate them. They have the capital to bring new products to market and introduce some more innovation to the search engine space. This IS a good thing. However it's going to cost Microsoft an arm and a leg to get in. Yahoo! bought Overture for the paid inclusion search, Google has it's own products now for sponsored search as we know. Microsoft is going to have to develop this capability in house now, or pay a king's ransom to Yahoo! to get the Overture paid search into their product.
The only advantage Microsoft has is that when you install IE, your home page is always MSN search. When you mistype a URL (outside of VeriSign's squatting), you get sent to MSN search. They'll get a lot of traffic by default.
But it also could re-open anti-trust inquires as well....very interesting.
I really a while back about the army doing automate image analysis feeding a computer pictures in order to identify hidden tanks. It worked great. Sorta.. it turned out that the army, in order to teach it, fed in pictures of tanks hiding in trees. Well the program started to mark as a 'hit' anything with trees in it. As i recall it was abandoned.
Microsoft is betting millions
To us mere mortals, that's like betting a $1.00.
Unless someone downloads the Google Toolbar, the only search option in 80% of the browsers on the web will be Microsoft's. That is a marketing message for advertisers that Google cannot match. Most of Microsoft's business are only to provide value-add for Windows and Office. Profitability beyond that is only gravy. Now, you take a Microsoft search, link it with Office-specific tools that let people search for supporting footnotes or photos while drafting a document, or PowerPoint presentation, then you have some value there.
It doesnt matter at all whether Microsoft comes up with anything better than Google, what matters, is that they have the capacity to suck the oxygen from Google's revenue stream if they ever come remotely close, because of all the desktops under their control.
The future probably sees Google in court asking to be placed next to Microsoft's own search button in their browser or whatever is supposed to represent browsing in Longhorn or beyond. When that happens, you know that Google has lost the battle.
Can't find anything!
What I would like to see in a search engine is a engine that not only knows the picture, but also knows what's in the EXIF tags as well. There's also that XML-based creator field standard thing.
Could make for some intresting surgical searches. Want to see what output a specific model of digital camera it makes? Put in the model's name in the right field for EXIF, and see what people have come up with.
...you guys are slowing down a little....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Tools on the google labs pageare labeled beta or whatever but they are still much more feature-filled and stable than the competitors' products I am aware of.
In this case, msn makes this mistake again when they are publishing some features which "will be" doing foo or bar some day.
Of course, an advanced picture search is nice and it might lead into more results than images.google.com but the main difference is that images.google.com is real.
The topic was "Microsoft Works on Search Capabilities" which is a correct headline. The rest was redundant.
(did anyone make an obligaroty "Microsoft Works"-joke regarding to the topic yet?")
The only thing I can see from Microsoft when it comes to search engines are logfile entries like:orand this (several hundred times):and finally
Would this enable people to find porn that strongly resembles people you know? Just put a picture of them in and do a search through vast porn archives until you have a decent match for facial features? This could give creepy stalkerism a whole new level of creepiness.
-1, "1337" speak
is to whistle a song to the mic and having Google give me some mp3 with that tune...
--krahd
mod me up, scottie!
mod me up scottie!
For example, users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face or background."
/.? There's no face!
What if I'm searching for an alternate link for the Goatse man for posting on
Well, my father was recently telling me that he was considering repainting the garage with some kind of latex paint but was concerned about wether it would bond appropriatly to the wall. He wanted to see results of how that would work out...
I can allready see him going to MSN image search and searching for "Latex Bondage"
yeah, this was taken from some silly flash clip about parents and the internet...
Search: "boobies"
Results: First 100 of approximately 475,547,574 results displayed.
Search: "linux"
Results: Did you mean windows?
Search: "ashcroft current location"
Results: You are under arrest.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Has anyone seen nutch? It looks pretty interesting. "Nutch provides a transparent alternative to commercial web search engines. Only open source search results can be fully trusted to be without bias. (Or at least their bias is public.)"
Take a look here: here
Joe6pack: Sorry, Google, I know you've got a better product and all, but MSN search came with my browser which came with my OS which came with my computer. Switching is too hard, and anyway I heard that MSN search works better with Windows.
So MS illegally uses its OS monopoly to create a monopoly in the browser market, which it will now, in turn, use as leverage to gain an illegal advantage over search/portal competitors.
I guess this is where the DOJ's failure to secure meaningful remedies against Microsoft comes to roost.
Just like when you could type certain phrases in Word and the thesaurus would translate them into something even funnier. I can't recall which older version, but if you typed in something like, "Bill Gates died." then the thesauraus would return "Hallelujah". All I know is that Bill Gates is a separated twin with the bassist for REM.
My favorite browser is Opera...mouse gestures, tabbed browsing, threading, well done popup blocking, and did I mention mouse gestures?. Not that it's the only browser with some of those, but it is very fast and low on bloat. And I think it's the only one with the gestures. Not to mention the M2 mail client is really nice (once you sit down and get used to it). You just gotta know beforehand that not all pages load well. But in my browsing experience, 90% of the pages I visit have no difficulty. Most of the 10% have only minor formatting problems.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
While IE may have holes, the interface and the feel is far superior than anything else out there
Uhmm...Yeah, that's why IE's java and ActiveX support permanently and completely broke for no reason on my machine. Not even a total reinstall of Windows, Java and IE fixed it. I can't even use Windows Update with it, to say nothing of other sites using Java and such.
Sure is an awesome interface, when the majority of the sites I visit won't even display properly (if at all). There's no error dialog, no half-loaded script, nothing at all to help me figure out what's wrong- most of the UI seems to be built around glossing over errors as much as possible.
On top of that, there's no built-in support for pop-up blocking, there's at least a security hole or two almost every week, and just generally feels old and busted.
I've been using Firebird for the better part of a year now, and I couldn't be happier. It may not be perfect, but at least everything works, it feels fast and slick, and keeps junk out of my way while i'm surfing.
IE hasn't won anything...Most people just don't know there's any alternatives out there.
Long story short, Microsoft has far too much of an agenda to allow objective searches, and everyone knows it. There's no way I would ever depend on Microsoft's search engine to deliver reliable results about Linux, open source, the GPL, or anything else that MS is "competing" with. And neither would many of the millions of tech-savvy people who use Google every day.
That and the fact that a big part of Google's draw is its simplicity, in that you don't get 120K of "how would you like to buy some crap?" banners before you get to your search results. Microsoft doesn't have the restraint or the finesse to pull that off, either. They could -- but they won't. Not when the almighty dollar is at stake, which is all MS cares about.
So they might be able to sell it to the mom and pop users who have no clue, but replace Google? No. Anyone who knows anything about MS or Google won't go for it.
images.google.com
A search for Dilbert Images
A search for Linux Images
A search for Hot Grits
A search for Natalie Portman
Hell, fark.com uses GIS to refer to the results of a Google Image Search.
Seems MS is once again playing catch up and pretending it's a new idea.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
My first MSN image search will of course be: Bill Gates +pie
Knowing MS, they will screw this all to hell with stupid wizards, options, drop down menus, Clippy, etc. Have you seen their "Files and Folders" search in XP, compared to Win98 and 2k? They tried to make it user friendly, but for me, it's harder to use!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Now, times are different. Companies like Yahoo and especially Microsoft are aggressively investing in building the kinds of complex yet user-friendly search capabilities that Google has. Microsoft will soon have a search engine that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of Google's search engine. Google is doomed.
Internet-search tools is not the only market with a low barrier to entry. Another such market is the market for virtual machines. Consider the virtual machine monitor (VMM) sold by VM Ware. It did excellent marketing of a very simple idea -- and a very old idea. VMM was invented by IBM and has been around since the 1960s. The theory of VMM has been well documented and understood in the scientific literature. VMWare took the idea of VMM and simply applied it to the x86 chips. VMWare's genius is in marketing its product as though it were a revolutionary breakthrough. Most of its customers bought the marketing campaign with hook, line, and sinker.
Microsoft is now investing millions of dollars in VMMs and purchased the key VMM technologies from Connectix. Microsoft has succeeded in creating a VMM that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of the VMM sold by VMWare. VMWare is doomed.
Unlike both Google and VMWare, Microsoft has an R&D budget of billions of dollars. Microsoft can defeat both Google and VMWare in their respective markets. Despite public declarations to the contrary, both Google and VMWare are warily aware of Microsoft's R&D might and are working quickly towards an IPO while there is still chance for an IPO. If you buy stock in either Google or VMWare, you might as well just burn the money. It will be worthless.
I don't know... how well did the advertising slogan "Nothing sucks like a Vax!" work?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I wonder if you ever tried the search machine of MCN to look for Linux related sites? If this is the way M$ will organise the successor of Google, then lets stay with Google!
This update corrects an issue where the end user has specified some search engine other than the default msn one and will also correct browsers whose home page has been mistakenly set to something other than "www.msn.com". -- 2.8M
My Ass hurts.
users can ask their computers to retrieve all pictures that include a specific person's face
j pg e s%20-%20007.jpg g .gif a tes.jpg i den/eddie-bill%20gates.jpg B romas/Fotos/Humor%202/Bill%20Gates%20Feto.jpg / 24/cnforb24.jpg p g . gif
I wonder if they'll link to any of this pictures, when searching for this specific person's face:
http://www.areyadone.com/images/hated/bill-gates.
http://users.cybercity.dk/~cfs4636/PIC/Bill%20Gat
http://www.holub.com/goodies/images/Billborg.jpg
http://home.midsouth.rr.com/catcam/bill-gates-bor
http://www.kewlcard.de/bilder/postcard/5/bill%20g
http://www.rockhardplace.com/horror/images/ironma
http://superwebon.iespana.es/superwebon/Archivos/
http://www.paulsjusticepage.com/images/cyborg.jpg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/graphics/2002/09
http://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/DV/Staff/Lemmens/gates.j
http://images.ecampus.com/images/d/258/0312192258
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
google doesn't bother with extraneous crap. Altavista and AllTheWeb both support more types of searches than google.
A single feature is useless when another engine still returns better results. I still use google for text searches, only hopping over to altavista for a music search.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
For example Microsoft bought the set-top box leader - WebTV and everybody thought they would drive everybody else out of business - yet they screwed it up so badly that despite millions of dollars Tivo etc. overtook the former leader WebTV.
Google is successful with a simple concept: Don't be intrusive, carefully place advertisments and respect your visitor.
What Microsoft and obviously you don't understand is that you don't need an RD budget of billions to deliver that.
Microsoft's company philosophy and ethics are contradicting. They would plaster so many ads out there and scew the search results so much that they would open the way for alternative offers. Just look at MSN-search, the "featured" and "advertized" links are barely distinguishible from the rest. (a pale grey tiny text)
A battle between Microsoft and Google over search engine dominance. Who will win?
Hmmmmm... What advantages does each side have? Google has current dominance in the web search market. Microsoft has the ability to bundle its search technology into IE which it integrates into 98 percent of all desktops running on the planet.
Will the fact that this would be illegally leveraging its monopoly power on the desktop stop them? Doubtful. If their past behavior is any indication.
So in this contest it will be: Google 0, Microsoft 1.
Its been nice knowing you Google. You'll be able to sue but as our court system has shown, even if you win Microsoft will be allowed to profit from your demise.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The first 4 results for search for "Linux" on MSN are :
i gration)
1 - Amazon
2 - Ebay
3 - Introducing Linux by tech.msn.com: "Red Hat 9.0 is a boon for those who already use it, but it's too expensive to warrant a switch from Windows."
4 - Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP : "Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products."
(www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/m
Parent was exagerating the place of commercials on MSN: propaganda reduce advertising space a lot.
It's this attitude that kills companies more than any other reason. You must remember that despite Microsoft's attempts, there are competitors that they haven't managed to kill. Intuit is one, despite Microsoft practically giving Microsoft Money away with Windows 95, bundling it in virtually every "home" product they make, and aggressively pricing it. Quicken and QuickBooks still exist and are doing very well.
Should Google fear Microsoft? Who wouldn't? Should they lay down and die because they will inevitably be massacred by the Beast of Redmond? Of course not. Now, should Google IPO because of the Microsoft threat? I doubt it. Not being held to a board of stockholders lets them do things they wouldn't be able to do otherwise like refuse potential revenue streams like pop-up advertisments and pay-for-place search results. The very things that got Google where it is today would be lost if they IPOed and the stockholders started to demand that they maximize their revenue by doing so.
Right now Google has a better product than Microsoft. If they continue to have a better product than Microsoft, there's a good chance they could survive. If they cease having a better product than Microsoft they will die.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Um... Google, Ask Jeeves, and other major search engines have had image search capabilities for a while now. Just go to one of their sites, click on the menu tab for image search, then type in what you want to search for. Whether it's a celebrity, porn star, geographic location, tv show, or whatever, they'll usually have images of what you're looking for. MS is WAY behind the times here...
You know, if this new technology allows me to search for boobs belonging to particular individuals, it may be the best thing to come out of Microsoft's R&D, since ....err.... ever!
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
"Search engines are doing a good job but not a perfect job," said Koenigsbauer, adding most search results today "don't deliver the results people are looking for."
This is certainly true. If Microsoft can do a better job than Google, that would be great. Given the pathetic search capability of Microsoft's own online knowedgebase, and their retarded clippy help system, one is not terribly hopeful.
However, after many years and many millions they have managed to build a stable (if not secure) desktop operating system and IE is the overwhelming winner in the browser market. If they are really determined to own the search market they may succeed. Some day.
meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"
tag to keep just Microsoft from indexing your site, maybe like
meta name="borg" content="noindex,nofollow".
Then I realized there already is one. To keep Microsoft from indexing your website but still let Google and other search engines index the site, use this meta tag:
meta name="Keywords" content="Linux"
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Are you feeling the irony, baby?
This link seems to work.
Let's preface this by saying that I am not anti-MS. I even formerly have used MSNs page as my home page. I like the fun stories, etc.
About 2 months ago, Microsoft decided that the MSN search box would steal focus from anything in the browser. Want to type in a URL in the address bar while the page is loading? Helfway through it steals focus and the URL is jacked up.
I use the Google toolbar, and even when I'm typing a search term in there, MSN steals focus and redirects my keystrokes to their search box.
I found this new "feature" to be som completely intrusive that I left MSN as a home page. And I'm not going back.
The sad part is that this has been happening for 2 months, and I've never heard anyone else complain.
"It looks like you're browsing porn. Can I give you a hand with that?"
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
Actually you can get mouse gestures and whole whack of other spiffy extensions/add-ons for Mozilla.
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/
Sorry, I'm going to have to say Opera rules everyone.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Microsoft goes well beyond that example to the far reaches of paranoia. Not only must they be number one in their sectors, they then cannot stand that there are other companies in other sectors doing well and so they feel compelled to go trounce them in that sector too. Then they take a deep breath, look around, and see yet another area that they didn't think of but someone else did and is succeeding at. And the beast rears up to devour yet another good company.
This may make business sense, but it's so off the deep end psychologically that a growing number of people are saying they no longer wish to do business with such a company. Hint: Long term capital appreciation doesn't happen when you are despised in the marketplace and scorned by your potential customers.
Microsoft couldn't be happy just being number one. They had to be the only one, and that's just sick.
I would say it's worse than that. Other than the two core areas: operating systems (and I use the term loosely) and office suites Microsoft has managed to fail at, hose, bungle and just generally screw up everything else it has tried. Look at the personal finance market, for example. Intuit handily threw Microsoft out of that race, and the only reason that Microsoft didn't succeed with its usual approach of simply buying Intuit is because Federal regulators queered the deal. No, Microsoft, in spite of those billions of surplus dollars I keep hearing about, is a fundamentally incompetent operation outside of its few (phenomenally) successful areas. It remains to be seen whether the XBox has any staying power, but I think that Microsoft will ultimately manage to screw that up as well.
... well. The Mongols had a similar one.
I tend to agree with you that it will be difficult to unseat Google. It works, its "free" and everybody uses it. Geeks aren't the only people that appreciate a clean, functional Web application without all the baggage. Matter of fact, I've found that most non-geeks I know prefer that simplicity, since a complicated portal site like Yahoo just tends to confuse them.
And I think you're being too generous. Microsoft doesn't seem to have much in the way of corporate ethics and as far as philosophy goes
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
MSN Search won't replace Google for one reason: MS is constitutionally incapable of leaving their own interests, financial and otherwise, out of the results. People prefer one search engine over another mainly based on whether it returns accurate, unbiased, relevant results, and keeps the paid-for stuff out of the way of the actual results. MS won't be able to resist trying to "improve" things by putting the paid-for listings in with the results (where they're more likely to be clicked on, and therefore more valuable to Microsoft because they can be sold for a higher price), biasing the results in favor of their own sites (which would result in increased value for Microsoft for those sites) and so on. Given alternatives, people will tend to migrate towards the one that gives priority to their interests and away from the one that considers their interests secondary.
The chief problem with MSN is and always has been all the ads. I don't mind ads, as long as they're unintrusive. This, in my opinion, is where Google's single-mindedness made them the star. They didn't create a huge "portal", the way Yahoo, Lycos and the rest all did around 1999; rather, they simply created a search page. All it does is search.
Google's ads are also revolutionary. Simple, all-text links, all of which are clearly labelled as adverts (or, to use Google's parlance, "sponsored links"), mean less confusion. In short, Google has chosen absolute simplicity and straightforwardness over marketeering. Microsoft will want to make money off ads, so unless they follow the Google credo to the letter, people will still eschew MSN for Google. The only way to topple Google would be to make a faster, simpler, less intrusive search engine than Google, an that is one mighty tall order.
Konqueror is not Mozilla-based. It uses its own rendering engine, KHTML. KHTML is also used by Safari.
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