MSN Rolling Out New Search Engine In July

X writes "Looks like Microsoft is going to release its new search technology soon. The online search world is about to get very interesting...." July launch; looks like they will continue to use Overture for a while, but the competition for dollars and users will definitely heat up.

Comments

Re:Everyone will just carry on using Google though

[Anonymous Coward]

From: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blasp irin.htm

The folks at Bayer came up with the name Aspirin, it comes from the 'A" in acetyl chloride, the "spir" in spiraea ulmaria (the plant they derived the salicylic acid from) and the 'in' was a then familiar name ending for medicines.

Aspirin was first sold as a powder. In 1915, the first Aspirin tablets were made. Interestingly, Aspirin (R) and Heroin (R) were once trademarks belonging to Bayer. After Germany lost World War I, Bayer was forced to give up both trademarks as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Re:nice..

[Glamdrlng]

Actually, I'd be very interested in how Microsoft decide to differentiate themselves in terms of a search product. Obviously, sinking this much money into a completely different search means they must have some sort of strategy for toppling Google off the throne, right ? That's what I want to see.

Let's take a look at some of the primary factors that will come into play when running a server farm for web-spidering purposes:

Operating System:

Google runs a strpped-down linux kernel specifically tweaked to facilitate two tasks: crawling web pages and returning search engine results. Assuming that Microsoft eats their own dog food, they will either run their own bloated Server 2003, or they'll come up with a customized windows installation with a bunch of the extraneous crap excluded. Edge: Most likely Google.

Hardware:

Microsoft has the revenue stream to build server farms of mammoth porportions, and they have multiple sites across which they can distribute their spider farms at little to no additional cost. On the other hand, if Micorosft serves its searches off of an unmodified 2003 kernel, they'll need much more in the way of hardware resources than Google will. OTOH, Google has by and large rewritten the book on maximizing the efficiency of the systems that serve up searches. They also have incrementally more experience trending hardware utilization for a high-volume search engine than Microsoft. Edge: Most likely Google.

System Administration:

If google rewrote the book efficient utilization of resources on search engines, they wrote the book on system administration of a high volume search engine completely from scratch. With their incredibly low ratio of sysadmins to supported systems, Google has a head start on running a sustainable operation than Microsoft. OTOH, MS has the extra hands to throw at this endeavor, and it's possible that they could use tools like Windows Services for Unix and Windows Scripting host to automate sysadmin tasks on their servers much like google did. What will factor in the most here is the internal politics at Redmond. If the busness center responsible for SMS decides that this needs to be a case study on SMS deployment, than Microsoft will surely fail on this objective. If on the other hand they avoid SMS like the plague, then they'll be in better shape, but again they'll be trying to reinvent the wheel while google is already racing around on radials with phat 20" rims and neon lights. Edge: Most likely Google.

System Security:

It will be interesting to see how the new MSN will be impacted by the next blaster worm. This search engine will have one of the biggest sets of crosshairs in the world painted all over it, and it will be interesting to see how the next IIS vulnerability is handled. Look for a mysterious outage at about the same time as a new vulnerability is discovered, or look for a vulnerability that affects everyone running IIS, except for the servers running MSN. Edge: Google.

Integrity of Searches:

Here, google outshines Microsoft. While google has had its share of search engine results controversies, I don't see how Microsoft will be able to risk the temptation of tampering with search engine results. Both companies have very clear agendas. Microsoft's agenda is to push Microsoft products and line Microsoft pockets, while Google's agenda is to provide a low-overhead search engine while providing the best possible user experience. Edge: Most certainly Google.

At the end of the day, there are two benefits we are likely to see. One of them is competition driving down the price of paid search engine advertisements. The other is whatever OS customization, system management, and automation techniques Microsoft cooks up in the process of building and maintaining the server farms. If Microsoft chooses to share this info, then Windows administrators can better secure their machines, and the Internet becomes a safer place. If not, then at least there's the chance that Microsoft's ludicrous claims about them having a shorter window from vulnerability discovery to patch availability than Linux can be shattered.