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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.
Favorite Search Engine?
Google
Yahoo
Lycos
MICROSOFT
Missing Option?
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
Moogle?
(Envisions the lawsuits from Square as well as Google)
So what new feature is Google planning this time, then?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I heard that they are using a nonlinear version of page rank from a friend. Can anyone verify this ?
will anybody ever say, "Let me MSN search that"
Too many zeros, not enough ones
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.
Just being dominant today is no promise of future domination. TiVo's thhe word people use for PVRs, but we just had an article proclaim that TiVo's going to die yesterday...
No kidding, just at work I've heard "Google it." and "Did you Google for it?" more than a few times.
Trolling is a art,
This kind of brings up some interesting questions --
What happens when/if someone develops a search engine that really is better (gasp! horror!) than Google? Will people still continue to use Google because it's entrenched in their brains? Will people say Google and mean another search engine?
Depends on how they implement it. If they integrate it into IE, which is of course "inseparable from Windows", then yes.
If they make it the default home page, maybe, but that's a little grey.
If they make it a web-based search engine similar to google, and have no special references to it in Windows, no.
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.
Isn't this yet another abuse of its monopoly?
That depends--will they integrate microsoft web search such that any search on IE or explorer automatically also runs against the microsoft web search?
Will they skew web search results (searching for "Microsoft security hole" takes one only to microsoft update)?
Will they offer free ads for years in order to cut google's revenue stream ("knife the baby!")"?
Remain calm! All is well!
The parents was that google gained advantage from being the term for searching, i.e. "Just google for it". None of your examples had such an advantage.
The same way that everyone only uses Xerox photocopiers?
Just because the brand name is in the popular lexicon, doesn't mean that the product will be forever dominant.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Wasn't there a time when searching for Linux gave really stupid Microsoft-related results?
Too many zeros, not enough ones
An interesting quote was:
Instead of including paid listings within search results, which critics say results in misleading search results, MSN said it will display paid listings separately at the top and to the right of search results generated by its search engine.
If Google sinks without a trace tomorrow, at least they've forced other competitors to follow suit and remove paid listings as a revenue option.
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.
The more competition, the better for everyone, as far as search is concerned and where the cost of switching is so low (just point your browser elsewhere)
I think it's the perfect time for Google to begin playing up it's less known features. Phone number search, calculator, translator, news, froogle etc.
Now that there is a competitor in the search market that has the time and money to try competing with the Google algorithms (which are admitedly showing their vulnerability to link spamming now) Google should advertise their other extremely useful features which I'm sure much of their userbase doesn't even know exist. Not a major cross site campaign, but tips in the homepage would be a nice start.
Seriously, it took a long time after Google was launched for it to beat Altavista. I expect the same will be true here.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
What? Google separates them--Your search in the main part of the page and sponsored links to the side. Or are you referring to something else, because as far as I can see, Google does NOT mix paid results with relevant searches.
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...
My (very) simple take on Google - the main search page is small and light and loads incredibly quickly (even while I'm saturating wor...err, my connection with por...uhh, linux binaries). The page has never really changed that much and is very familiar, but the technology behind the page is constantly being tweaked. Of course, (fair) competition is almost always a good thing.
Google will always reign supreme, definitely.
I don't think anything is definite - Google has a clear head start, but I don't think even Google are invincible. This will be a very interesting space to watch, indeed...
The Mothership
of course it works both ways....Microsoft is also a mortal entity.
Could happen. Just like people say Kleenex when they mean a tissue and Aspirin when they mean ASA? Both are brand names but they're not used that way anymore. I can see the same happening to Google.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
I thought the only paid results on Google were the ones in the top right of the results page? Where it says "Sponsored links"?
boom boom boom
Yeah, like Rome meant the world, IBM meant a computer, there was just "the phone company", etc. I'm sure no one competes with Hoover either.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
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.
Will Microsoft try to take control in any existing domain related to computing ? They already have a monopoly on operating systems, messengers, and now they want to take control on search engines ? I know it's not new but, can't they really bear the idea that there is some company doing something better than them ?
I don't know if they will succeed in replacing google as the leader search engine... but I wonder if it is not dangerous for a company to attempt extending its control on everything.
Uh? Google displays the paid ads separately, if you haven't noticed.
careful, you just proved yourself incorrect. Do Hoover and Coke have 100% market share?
Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.
Now please tell me how the parent comment is a troll again. Or did it get modded down just because you didn't agree with this opinion.
So how long is it before we start seeing the headlines "Google is dead!"
(Not that I want to see google go, but everything else is dead. Apple, Tivo, BSD, and etc.)
Exactly, I think the grandparent here misunderstood the entire thing. The new msn search engine will actually look more like Google does now. It's the MSN search engine that DOES display paid ads in with the search results. I hate browsing to page 2 to find the first relevant result.
I'd have to agree. If a better search engine comes out, it will require a lot of money in advertising and a heck of a good engine to beat out google.
look at Q-Tip... The king of cotton swabs, but I can't remember a time when anybody called a cotton swab anything but a 'q-tip'.
In a lot of places, in homes, Google has become a verb: a lot of people say "I'll google it". If someone doesn't understand something, they Google it. Even if they have dial-up, it's easier to "google" something than it is to look it up elsewhere. MSN.com is a great start page, but I don't really like its search engine. It's not that great, IMHO.
I'm not sure you can compare an empire to a company, as for IBM they may have been used as the word for PCs before my time, or in another country, so you may be right about that one. Hoover I admit are nowhere these days, but thats mainly because of that whole free flights scandal..
You havent been around on the net for a very long time have you? I remember about 8 years ago or so when yahoo reigned supreme. It was huge portal second behing only AOL. Things were great. Everyone went to Yahoo to perform searches.. heck, "do you yahoo?" was something i heard all the time.
Where is yahoo now?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
No way! If a good competitor comes up, they're going to push their brandname as much as possible, and out-swamp google.
Google became number one through a combination of good technology (very good search algorithm, large number of computer clusters) and brilliant marketing (simple, ad-free, no-clutter, to-the-point interface; getting their search algorithm and computer statistics into magazines like Reader's Digest, etc).
Everybody's trying to embrace-and-extend this now, which means the push is towards a simple, utilatarian search giving relevant results. If somebody can do all this and give us something better, we'll switch over. Naturally, it'll be in the new company's best interests to use even smarter marketing to make us forget all about Google and not think about going back. As long as the verb "google" is associated with searching the web, this new company won't be able to beat Them.
IBM doesn't have mindshare anymore, but try to go anwhere without seeing an IBM logo. Cash registers, clocks, everything. They make lots of Business Machines, hence their name International Business Machines. They make a lot more than computers. (And they support Linux, so fuck their competitiors :D)
My other car is first.
I mean we've heard it before and I'm starting to believe it -- Google is dying. When you're the top search engine out there, people start wanting to make a living spamming, scamming, and (google)bombing the algorithm just so they show up first.
Continuing to improve is a must. That doesn't necessarily mean expanding to blogging and giving away free e-mails and stuff. Just give me the appropriate results to my searches, separate the ads from (informative) content, and keep things as simple as possible. It's tough when everyone's gunning for you, but you can't sit still -- the search engine war should be won by the engine that gives the best results.
Google -- I'm pulling for you. I really am. Don't Netscape your way into oblivion, please. Yahoo will likely compete on merit. MS will play "default with OS" against you. I really hope you'll make it out ahead.
As can be seen here, a search for litigious bastards brings Microsoft's pet puppets up at the top of the result list ;-)
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
IBM have mindshare among us. Quite a lot of it.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
...unless they plan to BUY google in April!!!
[tinfoil]oh shit...i bet the deal has already gone through!!! what have they done!?[/tinfoil]
Thank you, that is all.
beta.search.msn.com
Standard Oil is far from dead. ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, ChevronTexaco...All of those have roots in Standard Oil. ExxonMobil even uses it as a brand name FFS (Esso-S.O).
I get your point though.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Just because I need to xerox something doesn't mean I have to use that company. The world needed a verb that means `to look for something on the internet' and now it has one.
-Colin
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.
but i doubt very many said "do you yahoo" and thought it meant "do you use yahoo's search engine".
i know i never did. It is very common, and easily understood, that when someone says "google it" that means "search for it".... and although "search for it using google" is not necessarily implied, that's what people do; they use google.
Will they skew web search results (searching for "Microsoft security hole" takes one only to microsoft update)?
I don't think so, since I don't get suggested to search for porn anymore when looking for xfree86. =P Also, searching for Linux gives me quite good results.
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
I don't get "paid results mixed with relevant ones" on my google!
That said, I agree with the parent - we shouldn't let our anti-M$ blinkers keep us from taking a look. Maybe particularly since it's Microsoft - these are the guys who made IBM, Apple and CP/M cry, and who got rid of Lotus 123, Wordstar, Visio, Astound and half-a-dozen other major (and good) products defunct. Just because they haven't done much other than rattle their jewellry and hire evil goons in the last coupla years doesn't mean they aren't very, very dangerous.
Maybe they want to get their search engine out there, up and running before they lock Longhorn into it.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
While it's true that MSN is the default home page, and that there are certain levels of integration, there isn't anything overly blatant like a google bar for MSN. Also, the fact that they have used some integration doesn't mean they have the right to do so. Europe seems to be of the opinion that MS doesn't have the right to include a media player at all, why would search engine integration be different?
does m$ delete all references to themselves and big gates? hehe.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I actually did some work on a system likes this not to long ago.
The problem is since most of the scientific journals,etc. are walled gardens (IE you have to pay to access or be a member of university XYZ) it can get very complicated to actually get something like that to work.
"We're really close to finding out what really strikes consumers as the most relevant search results," said Karen Redetzki, an MSN product manager.
Tranalation: After several years of weekly strategy meetings with high-paid analysts and consultants we have discovered that people do not, in fact, want advertisements to be displayed with search results.
~Tirinal
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I never even knew asparin was ever a brand name. You sure about this? I mean there's tons of companies that make products with the label of asparin, yet only one that actually can use the label of kleenex. So i'm not doubting you, i'm just curious as to how long ago asparin was a brand name and what happened so that everyone could use it on their products. I know that tylenol is a brand name and everyone else just labels it "APAP Pain Reliever" or whatever, same with naproxen sodium hehe.
(yes i know its kinda off topic, but i'm curious, posting w/o bonus)
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Friends depends on MSN messenger.
Messenger depends on hotmail.
Hotmail shows you msn.com and their stupid engine.
Search their stupid engine for "GPL" get "SCO: IBM cannot enforce GPL"
It all ties together. If they buy out AOL, MSN will become The One Messenger, and all hell breaks loose.
Intergated, i'd say. They just added a new toolbar for IE to link it. Right now it's just an option, but let's just wait! http://toolbar.msn.com/
It seems pretty clear that Microsoft is bent on controlling every aspect of computing. This search engine technology marks their foothold in providing content (as does MSN). Yesterday's mention of AOL marks their foothold in providing access to content (as does MSN). They're also involved in everything from peripheral hardware to the BIOS to the operating system to the browser (and other web content software). Ok, this is all rather obvious.
Looking at this body of involvement I see two areas of growth. Microsoft will not content themselves until they are involved with the very core of the internet. They need their own backbone. As an ultra-slim MCI emerges from bankruptcy later this year, they'll be a very juicy target, especially considering they own UUNET.
As mentioned, Microsoft has a foothold in every part of the computer up to my very fingertips with their own keyboards. The other area of growth is my hands themselves. More and more peripherals will be coming with the secure computing initiative that will be used to securely identify the user. There are already biometric devices, ho hum. But, Microsoft has already started expressing interest in RFID technology. Your own embedded RFID will eventually be your user authentication method.
In conclusion (a very obvious one): This is the Computer Age. Microsoft aims to make themselves synonymous with the very word "computer" and they're doing a pretty darn good job. As everything in the world ends up with some computer in it (think RFIDs), Microsoft will gain global dominance and a strangehold on every industry. If this isn't a monopoly, I don't know what is.
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.
I'm not sure that Google has killed thousands of people, extorted money from collonies, and levered social unbalance accross massive continents!
No kidding, just at work I've heard "Google it." and "Did you Google for it?" more than a few times.
That it ususally the first thing I say when someone asks me a very simple question.
http://use.perl.org
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.
This kind of brings up some interesting questions --
What happens when/if someone develops a search engine that really is better (gasp! horror!) than Google? Will people still continue to use Google because it's entrenched in their brains? Will people say Google and mean another search engine?
No. Used Hotbot for years because it was a much better search engine (to me at least.)
Several people would search for the answer to a difficult question, I would find it easily faster than they did.
When this started to stop, I inquired as to what search engine they used. Google was it.
I turned many people on to Hotbot, and then I turned many people on to Google. When you need information quickly, you will use whatever is most effective.
http://use.perl.org
What on earth is the "purpose of the web"???
Also, you probably shouldn't use Google to do research searches. Have you tried PubMed? It's one of the best, and free to search. Some non-free ones (which universities generally have subscription for) are BIOSIS Previews and ISI Web of Knowledge.
As a side point, I frequently use Google to look up stuff for reports at university, and am generally surprised at just how relevant the search results are, for a non-scientific web search engine. Google on!
*sighs*
Once again I must point out, the first two have already happened, MSN is both the default search and the default homepage and IS integrated into IE! all have been true since the release of IE 4 over 6yrs ago!
Kinda like "Go SCO Yourself" will dissapear a couple of years from now?
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Yup, good thing there isn't a google bar for MSN. Really though, there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. It's when the OS ships with the browser integrated, and the browser has the toolbar installed and enabled by default, not to mention IE's default and uncustomizable behavior that invalid URL's are converted to MSN searches...that's when they're engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
Do a bit more digging, for as little as $200 you can get rank preference for your page.
not just the simple ones either. Google is the first thing my PhD (astrophysics) supervisor tries for info.
.com or .co or hyphenated etc. I don't think MS can compete with this, they just have too much bloat. you can't get any simpler than Google, but there are millions of ways MS can screw it up, so statistically speaking their failure is practically guaranteed.
I use Firefox so with the integrated Google searching it's often quicker to just type a company name into Google than to guess whether it's
More like Kleenex, Band-Aids and Rollerblades.
Indeed, once a brand name enters the common parlance, it has a life independent of the company that it stands for, even if that company loses its leadership position.
Boss (handing you a stack of paper as he points to the Canon copier next to your desk): "Please xerox these documents."
Boss (handing you a stack of reference citations as he points to the Microsoft search engine on your desktop): "Please google these terms."
You might think it can't happen, but it can. The fact that Google is so dominant today is no guarantee of anything except that its name will probably remain recognizable as a verb for awhile. Google will have to continue to compete, and compete well, if it wants to stay on top. It was not very long ago that AltaVista ruled the search engine world, and it did not take very long for its user base to erode when Digital/Compaq failed to give it the priority it deserved.
don't be a tit. "Europe" isn't opposed to MS having a media player, it's opposed MS having a media player with access to special OS commands to make it seem faster and better. "Europe" wants other media players to be given these abilities.
Earlier this morning, a forum site that I help run was getting swamped by about ten 'guests' that traced from Microsoft, and I told one of the other admins that it looked like Microsoft is getting ready to roll out their new search engine because their bots were spidering us alot more than the usual two or three guests we got from the old-style MSN search bots.
.
(biased nonsense deleted)
Hardly.
Cheers,
Ian
How many times can MS get away with crying wolf like this?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
What I've heard through the grapevine about this new search is that it will be more interactive.
When you type in a search for "apple" the search engine doesn't know if you mean Apple Computers or Apples the fruit. MSN search will ask you.
This example is kind of obvious (just type Apple Computers into google), but there are less obvious searches where the interaction could really make a difference.
Don't count MS out. If they do enable better searches they could win this battle.
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
Actual results:
#1. Amazon's Linux software store.
#2. Linux Online (linux.org)
#3. A linux utilities site.
#4. Redhat.com
#5. Linux.com
.
Seems like they are really taking their embrace and extend policy all the way along. The beta.search.msn.com already implements Google features like the site search. Try searching for something like Linux site:sun.com to search within just the Sun site.
Already a lot of the results turned up in searches seem pretty close to what Google turns up. The news links are up there pretty much like Google again and the page is a lot lighter than most standard MS pages. The search is pretty quick too, though it doesnt yet tell us how long the search took!
The only think missing is "I am lucky" button.
Can I borrow your sig?
MSN is not going to beat google anytime soon in my opinion. Not unless google makes some silly decision. And the reason why I think this may sound a bit stupid to some:
When I want to do online searches, I just open the browser and type www.google.com. I never click on the search button (that some browsers have). And it's not just me. Most of the people I know do exactly the same thing. It's a sort of automatic behaviour.
Now one could argue that MS can try to put search buttons all over the place that lead to MSN, or even embed an MSN searching feature right into their OS, but given how immediate www.google.com has become to many of us, they will also have to fight against such a reflex in most people. Google is not just a name. For most people it is a sinonym of "web searching".
But that's just my opinion... who knows what could happen in a few years.
Diego Rey
diegoT
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.
Yes, most people will carry on using Google... The question is for how long. An eternity is a damn long time, and I think we'll see a very competing search engine in at least a decade or so. I think it's likely this one will be MSN because of Microsoft's dominance in the business.
I'm already seeing the downfall of Google in some areas, where many searches I do just return commercial sites which are trying to fool Google. Google tries to fight this by tweaking their ranking algorithm -- usually unsucessfully so far. I think they need to do some major revisions to their ranking system to reclaim their throne in next generation search engines. I highly doubt Google is the Ultimate Search Engine there'll ever be. What do I now... Maybe we have barely seen anything yet.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Maybe this one will be able to find me a Mahito recipe on the internet.
Neither do you say "just cola" when you tell someone to get something to drink. I think this is just an irrelevant minor advantage Google has, and we will once again see proof that Internet is the most fluctuating medium in the world by the next generation shift in search engine technology. We have basically only had one yet when Google entered the scene.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Will people still continue to use Google because it's entrenched in their brains?
Not me
Will people say Google and mean another search engine?
No
But then again, maybe I belong to a minority.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
What are you talking about? Only a few years ago and people were talking about how Altavista was unbeatable.
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Uh, you seem to be missing a very big point.
If you want to use a different copier, you have to go buy one.
If you want to use a different search engine, you type a URL into your browser.
There is no brand lock-in on the Web.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
At the rate MS does things the virii and worms will
beat them to market.
At least searching for xfree86 doesn't bring up porn now.
R M= SMCRT
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=xfree86&FO
we just had an article proclaim that TiVo's going to die yesterday..
Did they?
I can usually find pretty much the same web sites no matter what search page I use. But I use Google because when I go to www.google.com there's one image, three lines of text total and a couple links. The page loads fast.
I don't need to see the news, weather, articles, flash animations, the time and date, the world affairs, the best deals on travel, and everything else you can imagine all the the front page. If I need those things I will use google to search for them.
Google will remain #1 until they change their front page to be full of bullshit like MSN, Yahoo, etc.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I don't think MS can compete with this...
Does the phrase "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish", ring any bells?
Don't forget: The Titanic is unsinkable!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
MSN Search for "google"
Good for them.
"tips in the homepage would be a nice start,"/i>
Please see this, it shows you how to "Google" more effectively.
Once more with the "preview" button.
"tips in the homepage would be a nice start,"
Please see this, it shows you how to "Google" more effectively.
Who else thinks this is bullshit?
I know when I started googling more it had nothing to do with "search technology" but with the relative nakedness of google's page compared with Yahoo's. The less you put on the search page besides the search itself, the more I'll love it!
...and about every picture on the web that is faked or looks unbelievable people say: that's shoped! of course it doesn't mean that exactly Photoshop is used to fake that picture...
If this comes to pass, it will be interesting to watch and see what effect it has on the rapid innovation that has characterized the history of software. Despite their claims, I don't see where MS is much of an innovator. Of the things that are making money for them now, they didn't invent word processing, spreadsheets, data base servers, GUIs, Web browsers, network media players, e-mail clients, online communities, interactive television, or PDAs. They have done a very good job of recognizing products once someone else has invented and introduced them, but they do not seem to be good at inventing new things themselves. They have the resources now -- cash on hand, staff, market leverage -- to arrive "late to the party" and still become dominant. But despite their claims to a $5B/year R&D budget, they don't seem to invent new stuff.
As I recall Netscape was in a similar position. Never under estimate Microsoft's power to abuse its monopoly position on its desktop.
Let's look at what each side has:
Google: Current dominance in the search engine market.
Microsoft: Desktop OS monopoly running on over 95% of the PCs on the planet. A legal system that doesn't have the backbone to stop them from bundling their "search technology" into their OS. Billions of dollars to bribe our corrupt political system with campaign financing.
Score: Google 0, Microsoft 1
Google will be history within five to ten years unless our courts and political system gets taken back from corporate interests.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I've never used Hoover, and I don't like Coke.
There is no sig.
If this isn't a monopoly, I don't know what is.
it's a World domination by Billgatus of Borg.
I searched for two items on the beta engine (top of my head- linux and apple - not related to whether they are competition for microsoft)
Linux and Linux
Apple and Apple
The first results were from Amazon.com and the most relevant results (linux.org and apple.com) were somewhere down the list. Looks like their page ranking mechanism needs more work that what could be done by July.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
actually over the past Year Google has become less and less useful with people playing with page ranking... When I search for something Its a rare ocasion that I need to be directed to a Website where I can buy it... This is becomming all to common in my searches.. So when a New Search engine pops-up I give it a spin to see how many "Factual" hits I get rather than commercial hits.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
In a few years, most search engines would probably not be free anymore. Even Google (our all-times favorite) is going commercial, and as this story shows, only companies with deep pockets will be able to pay for the bandwidth and computing resources of a serious search engine. Would you trust such engines from being bias-free?
All is not lost however. Let's roll our own search engine! A search engine from the users, for the users, and by the users. No, not for consumers, but for people interested in good results.
Obviously, a simple robot hooked up on a modem or adsl line will not be sufficient. There's simply not enough bandwidth to crawl the Net. But there is enough bandwidth if we take a few hundreds (thousands) of nodes. Just like seti@home, a distributed search engine would consist of two parts: a more-or-less-centralized-database which would maintain the index and work-units, and thousand of client machines, which would fetch a list of URLs to crawl from the DB, crawl a few levels, and return partial indexing results back to the DB. The DB would then generate an index just like google and others.
The beautiful part of this, is that it would scale very well: the more client machines participate, the faster will a new index be generated. The fewer participants, the longer the update intervals. That's all there is to it.
Another advantage is that we could tune the results (and work-units) dynamically, by analyzing the query strings, and other criteria. It may very well happen that this search engine adapts itself to the need of its users _and_ participating crawlers. We could even get results that are currently very hard (of not impossible) to get with closed-source and closed-index engines: How's about searching in DNS (a la whois.sc)? How's about analyzing the popularity of query strings? All this could be possible with an open index!
Ideas? Comments? Perhaps there's already something similar in sourceforge? Something that we could improve?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
MS's search may or may not end up on top.. But typically they will not be able to stay on-top.. unlike most every other area they have reached dominance in they just cannot stick it in a "Objective reached" folder and toss a small team of people at it to keep it rolling in money... MS Fails to Truely Innovate.. what they can't aquire they dump money at and eventually come up with a product that is comparable and use thier desktop to lock out or prohibit competition... I don't think they will be able to use their time proven techniques to build a search engine and keep it on the top of the resource pile.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Hey maybe the Microsofties will by now have figured out that terrible inexplicable bug in the code for their previous version so people only thought there were 14 links to 'Linux' all over the net!
I'd suppose so at any rate - for if there are two things we can count on with Redmond, it's #1) always telling the truth and #2) always working hard.
Yes, but how many prefer Pepsi ?
Semper ubi sub ubi
When MSFT pries my cold dead hands off of it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
http://people.opera.com/howcome/2003/2/msn/
Maybe if we're lucky it'll work on more than just IE? MS sure has a great track record for Quality Assurance.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
Is there a way to make your apache block Microsofts search-engine?
.htaccess perhaps?
I sure don't want Microsoft to index MY sites!
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
MSN Rolling Out New Search Engine In July
I can't decide which potshot to take...
from the can't-walk-on-its-own-two-feet dept.
or
Cue the dung beetles.
I don't think "Google" will remain the generic word for websearching if people switch to another engine. For one thing, "google" is only a verb, not a noun. One might say "I googled for information on monkeys," but no one ever says "MSN has a google, but it's not very good." Also, most brands that become generic are simple, and replace unwieldly terms, often having fewer than half the syllables of the official generic term. For example: Kleenex vs. Facial Tissue, Xerox vs. Photocopier, or Band-Aid vs. Adhesive Bandage. Google is a longer word than "search."
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Boycot Microsoft search engine. Set your web server to refuse to talk to their spider.
so why would they get search right? As a professional SEO though, I am dreading the day that free organic search engine traffic dries up.
this is especially true outside the US.
in the philippines, for example, toothpaste is commonly referred to as Colgate, regardless of the actual brand.
i have a feeling the same thing might happen to the this Google word that's been indoctrinated into the language.
i agree, MS will have a tought time breaking into that mind share, but it's not as obvious as you make it seem.
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
Though some of it borders on criminal.
Anyone else getting cigarette ads when you're sent to MSN branded websites?
Selling tobacco is murder.
* (like Halliburton and the GOP... remember fascism means corporatism - if Bush had some charisma and intelligence, he could be Hitler...thankfully he's a bit of an idiot),
Because we all know that the Democrats political coffers are as clean as a virgin's honeypot. I think corporate influence on American politics has gone too far as well, but there is plenty of corporate money being accepted on both sides of the aisle.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Unfortunately, it's not a level playing field.
No. I haven't been to any of those web sites. I seem to get along just fine without them.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If they say (paraphrased) "we are close to finding out what consumers are looking for...", I bet this rings a bell to 99% of people to realize that MSN's technology is probably nowhere close to success to beat Google.
I dare to categorize this action of MS as nothing but a brutal business attempt to undermine the capital strength of Google once it goes IPO. Investor confidence is not just a coke-sniffing Wall Street stockbroker's fancy dictionary, it is something that will DRIVE the perceived value of Google either up or down.
And it should be obvious that this type of PR coming from Microsoft at this time is nothing more but an attempt to make that direction 'down' instead of 'up'.
This is not personal, this is business.
So this means in 40 years I will be able to look at my grandkids and say:
"You know, that word google y'all use?, used to be a website by th'namea google, oh musta been back in aught four. S'how th'word came ta be used in that 'ticler manner"
And then they'll ask we what a website is....
That's what I meant by possibly intergating it into the OS later. Right now they're (M$) asking for user opinion on it (the toolbar). Why do you think that is? Oh well, At least it has a popup blocker, which seems to work well, and a "highlighting" feature, obviously swiped from Gooooogle. Still no tabs browsing in IE , so I'll stick to the Geckos.
Actually, no it won't. as long as "search the web" is the first thing 75% of people see when they open their browser. I've actually taken calls from people who complained thet when they input "livejournal" in the search, the first result isn't what they wanted. They then go on to get indignant when I suggest they type it in the address bar...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
I don't believe I made any assumptions about what they would do. My intent was to approach both scenarios: a full-fledged server install vs. a sripped down custom install. The Xbox is a very good point, but then again the xbox is essentially a client, not a server. If they run on a modified kernel, in many ways it looks bad for them. It sends the message "We couldn't efficiently use this operating system we pimp out in this environment because it was too bloated. We managed to strip it down to the point that it was useful to us, but that's something only we can do, because it's our product."
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
I haven't heard opinions from other /.ers on this, but for me one of the biggest time savers is search engine prefixes. For example, my browser is set so that if I type "g tacos" into my url bar, I get the results of a google search on, you guessed it, tacos. I have a list of about two dozen: sd points to slashdot, sf to security focus, rfc to the ietf rfc listing. Does anyone know if this has been incorporated into one of the linux web browsers yet?
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.