Slashdot Mirror
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.
Google has been pushed into the common vocabulary, like Hoover has for vacuum cleaners and Coke has for soft drinks. It has mind share, and a lot of it.
Google will always reign supreme, definitely.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Just like the Roman and British Empires, IBM, Netscape, East India Company, and all the other things this exact idiotic comment was made about.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
What ticks me off about this is that microsoft will deffinately put this as the default search EVERYWHERE in Windows. How many people do you know use Internet Explorer? Sure there are many other better options out there, but nobody cares for these because the majority of web surfers just use what is on the OS. This is why IE is so big, and unfortunately, it will probably transend to search engines as well.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
Users came to Google for the clean interface and stayed for the consistant results. I have known so many people who just use their search engine of choice through habit and never ever think to change. I'm sure we all can think of people who stubbornly cling to obscure legacy search engines like dogpile or even msn search (shiver)...
These are the people who just use msn or aol default search tool, and then discover that it is not working for them. Sooner or later they eventually find their way to Google; what would ever make them leave?
Casual internet users don't switch search engines out of curiosity. They have work to do and want answers fast. A new search offering would have to offer a simple, clean, easy to learn interface and consitantly great results to ever usurp Google. Or they could give away free money...
Excuse me, I am sure I must be mistaken, but interesting is hardly the word i would use to describe this. What would be interesting to me? A free, non-profit, search engine. Not funded by advertising. It would sort of be like the PBS of the of the WWW.
If I search for anything, pretty much the first hits are going to include Amazon.com advertising books about the subject. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the web? I would like to see only the online information which is A) free (as in dollar bills) to access and B) actually acurate (ie, not written by jr. highschool history classes which leave out all of the details and most of the actual facts).
Honestly, if it would also search articles in magazines and scientific/trade journals, and give me access to the full text, i may even be willing to actually PAY for the service. Something like, $10-$15 per month, even. This would greatly enhance the productivity of unversity students and professors.
This alone will sink it:
Redetzki said MSN will list three paid listings at the top of every search result, of which at least two will be advertisements sold directly by MSN.
People don't want the search results to come in 4th on the list -- they want it at the top.
Also, I found this quote to be sort of funny:
"We're really close to finding out what really strikes consumers as the most relevant search results," said Karen Redetzki, an MSN product manager.
They don't know, but they're really close to finding out what consumers want. Even the word "consumers" says a lot about their mindset. We're just there to buy stuff.
99/100 of my google searches don't have anything to do with buying stuff. But when I do want to buy something, I use google because it's the engine I'm used to.
MS will probably make a lot of money, because a lot of people don't know any better. I've been installing the google toolbar for people, because it blocks pop-ups, and about half of the people who have gotten it from me say that their searches have improved a lot because they've started to use google.
I had assumed that everyone was already using google, but the comments I've gotten suggest that isn't the case.
But google is the company that's driving the industry. They're the people who worked out the best way for an engine to work. MS isn't bringing anything new to the table, fundamentally, other than an ability to use their software to drive people to their site.
They're saying, basically, let's copy google to a large extent, except for a small number of changes that will make the site worse (ie., putting paid links at the top of the page instead of just over on the side), and use our position as a software vendor to drive traffic to our search engine.
I hate MS as much as the next guy. But they can't exactly just set this as the default in IE and win the war like the majority of posters seem to be saying.
Why not? They've done it with media player, IE, etc etc. Well they can't because they've been doing it for over 6yrs already and google rose to the top with MSN search as the default homepage and search in IE already!
Install IE, open the browser, up pops the MSN search page. You think just because they make a new search engine and start pointing to it as the default rather than MSN it's going to suddenly kill google?
I might have agreed 6yrs ago, but now having seen that at no time since they made it the default page with IE 4 in win98 has MSN EVER been the top search engine.. I'm afraid history has already shown otherwise sorry guys.
Lets talk about how they cleaned up the search results for Xfree86 and linux and such before making this announcement (check em) and how they will undoubtedly bring the scewed results back if they succeed and become top search dog.