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Microsoft Introduces Competition For Google News
Romeo E. Cabrera writes "In advance of an imminent launch of its own search engine, Microsoft has launched its own version of the popular Google News service. Based initially on feeds from the Moreover news aggregation service, the new beta service (known as MSN Newsbot) aims to provide news on a range of subjects including World, Sports, Entertainment, Science and Technology."
.. I doubt many here care. Just annother "innovation" from MicroSoft.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
It looks like you might have a point - at the moment, the second and third highest ranked articles are about Microsoft themselves.
I did a comparison of both by searching my hometown(in Canada).
The MS got 8 hits while Google got 21. The main difference here seems that Google hits were sourced from newspaper web pages and MS hits came mostly from newswire services.
"Linux Windows" on newsbot.msn.com = 717 stories
First headlines:
Sun Micro Signs China Desktop Linux Software Deal (Reuters)
Leader: Comdex reflects harsh IT realities (Silicon.com)
Brown defends Blair relationship (?? Guardian Unlimited)
"Linux Windows" on news.google.com = ~1,800 stories
First headlines:
Intel intros hyperthreading compilers for Linux, Windows (The Inquirer, UK)
Linux-Windows file access (Linuxworld)
An editor to ease Windows to Linux migration (Newsforge)
much like Linux search results in MSN's search
Didn't we just dispel that myth about a week ago, when showing that beyond MSN's initial page(s) of sponsored links, Linux search results thrived in massive numbers? A search for "linux" on MSN returns 440 sponsored links, most of which are legitimate linux sites. Going beyond that list yields over 15 million additional results. I know that doesn't compare to Google, but that's like apples to oranges. Google is a far superior search engine/service by its own merit. Linux.org is #4 on the first page of results, by the way (even though it is beneath that site about migrating away from linux over to Microsoft, lol).
I know that we can't expect Microsoft to roll out the red carpet for negative news about themselves too often, or even positive news for alternative products, but can we please stop with the paranoia? I think they've demonstrated that while they are in fact petty, they aren't quite that petty.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Did you even try running a search? Their site tends to return Sponsored Sites, Featured Sites, and then whole sites dedicated to your query. Only then are individual pages listed. The difference is sites vs. pages. The second page of results are not second-tier, but just individual pages. The intent is obvious: ads to pay for the site, then whole websites dedicated to your query, and then individual pages. For very generic queries like Linux, it's probably better to find a whole site that's a Linux authority rather than an individual page that talks about Linux a lot. You might not like the system, and that's fine, but to say that it's skewing results to favor a competitive business agenda is completely different.
Click on this (Redhat article):c lick/here.pl?z103279857&z=237487
http://g.msn.com/0PNENGB/1?http://c.moreover.com/
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.