Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Offers A Peek At New Search Engine
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "The Inquirer is reporting that Microsoft is offering a preview of its new search technology. The search engine preview has a minimalist interface, similar to Google. Microsoft claims over one billion web pages searched, but admits the fact that searching is a little slow. This technology hasn't yet been incorporated into MSN Search, though the site claims it eventually will be. In related news, the Financial Times is reporting that Microsoft are to improve the regular MSN Search site by removing paid advertisements from regular internet searches, a move that will cost them 'tens of millions of dollars.' Are the Search Engine Wars finally upon us?"
Redhat, SUSE, Mandrake, etc. don't turn up on the first page. WTF?
... I think I'll stick to google.
Oh I get it. Microsoft don't want their competitors turning up in search results.
Hmmm
What is important is that a search for litigious bastards still returns the SCO Group.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
Hey, at least microsoft did one thing right.
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Looks like it still thinks that xfree86 is "adult content"
q =x free86&FORM=SMCRT
http://techpreview.search.msn.com/results.aspx?
...they'll have a "Microooooooosoft" graphic at the bottom of the screen to allow you navigate between pages of results...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Search Error
MSN Search is temporarily unable to process your request.
Please try again in a few minutes.
EID: f:2114719238 - 1041:1041:10004:1059
HC: 71d61b16
Out of curiousity I also decided to check out MSN's Sandbox. This is pretty much their upcoming software and features. I was surprised to find pretty much everything they are listing has already been inplemented by Google. Time to play catch up!
NewsBot = news.google.com
MSN Toolbar = Google Toolbar
3 = I'm thinking this is just like Orkut, 3 is software that connects a small group of family and close friends, people who know and trust one another, so they can do fun things together in a whole new way. 3 is a beta test of an innovative application that lets users connect online, extending real-world social interactions.
NetScan = This is Google Groups.. searches USENET newsgroups
The only "original" item on there was TerraServer and that has been up and running for some time now.
I would be interested to see if MS decides to add much of the same features that Google has. Such as phone number searches, unit conversions, etc...Some things that make Google really unique. Perhaps MS could tie the search term, such as an address, to TerraServer will allow a person to get a direct overhead view of that place. However... They need to get some more updated maps to make this useful.
Hmmm.
Okay, random test. Search for "fisherman":
Sorry, no results were found containing "fishermen"
1 billion entries? Please.
Google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,350,000 for fishermen [definition]. (0.33 seconds)
Nice work so far MS...
Linux just to p*ss off Bill, courtesy of all his friends at /.
Mr. Smoove
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
about the performance and quality of the results of the search preview over at Webmaster World, including some feedback from MS employees.
So far, google has given me no reason to distrust them. Microsoft on the other hand... No thanks. I gave up on MS years ago. I'm sure I am not the only ./'er who feels that way.
Looking at it, it's not minimalist in the same sense google is. Google has a lot of content that is extremely well organized without a lot of extra crud. Google's content is well formatted and easy to read. Simply taking out your ads and superfluous fonts and graphics doesn't make put in the same ranks as google.
relys on aspx ?
I think you are a bit confused. aspx means asp.net and thats purly serversided. You can't *rely heavily* on this, its a choice of system.
And a damn good one right now if i might add this. People who used it will agree with me there. ( asp was crap )
Anybody know what the search engine spider calls itself.
I make sure that msnbot is not allowed to traverse my web site via the robots.txt file. I'd like to do the same with this robot.
BTW, I've noticed no appreciable decline in web hits at all.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Just to balance things... http://labs.yahoo.com/demo/nutch/
----
Search ErrorMSN Search is temporarily unable to process your request. Please try again in a few minutes. EID: f:1658889542 - 1041:1041:10004:1059 HC: 71d61b14
Try a search for 'email' or 'calendar' and guess who always comes up first? Not exactly impartial results, are they?
Sorry, no results were found containing "microsoft fud"
Why?
One is entirely server side and is transparent to the client other then the extension in the address bar. The other is a widely supported technology that's well supported on almost every platform with a recent web browser.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Would this imply that Microsoft is using the same algorithm as Google?
Gee, one billion pages and only 15 results for Linux? Why am I not surprised?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Try it! The best result is in the blue box at the top!
MSN's website is the most popular internet site for US users, with nearly 100 million unique visits each month
im slightly off topic here, but i cant help but wonder if the web browser included with the most widely used desktop os in the world DIDNT use msn.com as the default home page, would anyone have any reason to go there?
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
what do i think? i think you should stop having the marketing-drones right your copy, when Google says things like "give it a spin" or "it'll be back", it seems genuine, when Microsoft says it, it sounds forced and derivative of the original
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
While I'm normally pretty pro-MS (I actually like their products - I'm not kidding) MS stands very little chance here.
They're fighting a marketshare war, and searches are pretty much a commodity - unless they've got something very specialup their sleeves, their searches are the same as anyone else's.
And let's face it, Google won the mindshare a long time ago. Just like everyone knows what Windows is, everyone knows what Google is, even non-techs. Hell, it's damn near a generic term for searching by now.
Feedback:
and
If you expected a specific website in the search results but it wasn't there, enter the web address (URL) here:
Google's version of such a thing (like yahoo's) is just a comment box that gives you the feeling that nobody really ever reads. This looks like something a script could handle/automate and actually do something about.
Of course it would have to be intelligent enough to wait for a significant about of 'feedback' from a variety of IPs to avoid companies trying to harm the rank of their competitors.
.... Microsoft will be going on "tour" to say how much better their search engine is compared to google.
.. a search term. Please reboot to see your results."
Sorry, no results were found containing "skydiving"
Results 1 - 10 of about 577,000 for windows sucks. (0.26 seconds)
...and in MSN Search preview...
Sorry, no results were found containing "windows sucks" Can they really claim to have indexed so many pages? :-)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Results 1-1 containing "php"
Did you find what you were looking for? Send us Feedback!
I'm getting more hits than most of my regular visitors in my logs.. even google does not check my site on a daily basis but these seem to do it on a semi hourly basis.
Gentoo - no results
Redhat - 1 result redhat.com
Suse many results
slackware - many results
mandrake - mandrake.com 4th on list
XFree86 - adult content
Xfree - no results
linux - no results
Seems rigged to me
LINUX
'Nuff said.
-Vic
The First Search Engine War was fought years ago, and has been long over. But a blank check was given and all kinds of approaches and interfaces emerged. The winner was Google, though other technologies are still groveling for the spotlight. They won with a good interface, good results, without too much junk.
A Second Search Engine War might help to refine things even further. Microsoft seems to be starting from Google's UI model (everyone loves a winner) and working from there. That's great. There's not really a whole lot of ways for the users to lose here. Things might get even better!
Get off my lawn.
They don't even have search results for:
... even Google does ...
"what is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Geeze
-----
Web Hosting @ HostForADollar.com
It asked what I was looking for, but wasn't able to help:
Sorry, no results were found containing "something better than windows"
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Microsoft doesn't want to be incompliant with all the rfc's
they just can't find 'm;
Sorry, no results were found containing "http rfc"
Explains a LOT
MS has alot of really dumb execs who get their panties in a wad if they don't feel they're "on top." All this search engine can do is hurt them. Time and money will be wasted in a cheap imitation of google that nobody will use except the newbies who can't change the default page of IE. and why? because their egos are as bloated as their software.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Clicked next - suddenly, "Sorry, there a no results for 'eruvia'". Pardon? Try searching again from scratch, and once again suddenly Eruvia has disappeared. Can't get my original 15 results back at all.
I'm putting this down to extremely ungraceful load handling and the ongoing Slashdotting. What's this running on anyway? Netcraft says IIS/6.0 on Linux, so it's another Akamai job, but the hardware behind it doesn't seem up to scratch yet.
Cheers,
Ian
Nothing more than that really.
Its pretty slow, the results are inconsistent, cant even cope with a slashdotting. One things for sure this will be a real test of Microsofts server platform; So far I aint impressed.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
http://techpreview.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=o pen+source&FORM=SMCRT
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I tried Litigious Bastards, and it came up with no results. Maybe SCO is giving up!
Speak for yourself.
I don't understand all these posts comparing google's huge number of results for a certain search, while the Microsoft one returns a small number. Searching is not about returning a vast quantity of links. Who goes past page 3 anyway? Most people never even go past page 1, so really 10 results is the most that are usually needed.
If you're going to compare the two, the criteria should be, which returned the most meaningful results - maybe only 1 results is needed. A vast number of results is not always helpful.
TODO: come up with a clever sig
Whenever I read about the way MS improves their stuff when there is actual competition, I wonder what Windows would have been like now if there had been any actual real competition for marketshare in OSes in the last decade or so.
Try searching for Google. I half expected it to not show up at all, but it comes up as the first link. The second link is an antique site, which the contains no reference to Google or even the text "Google".
You'd be really surprised just how many people there are in the world who, when it comes to computers, don't ever bother changing their default page, etc. Microsoft has done quite well up to this point by playing to the lowest common denominator (which is what you get anytime you're pushing "ease of use" over actual features/technology). I'm sure that if IE 7 ships with this thing set to the default search page, they'll get their share of hits. Besides, are you really that upset that Microsoft is going to waste time and money? If you really wanted to subvert them, you should encourage them to throw as much behind this as possible, just to watch it all fail miserably.
Even ignoring the slowness, the results are extremely lacking
/2 million times fewer/
compared to Google. Here's a few quick searches I tried:
gethostbyname - no matches (Google=161000)
starbucks - 1 match (Google=1500000)
spiderman - 1 match (Google=2550000)
cassini - no matches (Google=941000)
gucci - 1 match (Google=3340000)
"garner state park" - failure (Google=3190)
Looks like it will find roughly
matches for a given keyword of Google. I don't think it's
quite ready to enter ship-test just yet.
>;k
First, I did a search for "nei" (because it's part of my domain name). The search engine presented several pages of matching results.
Then, the search engine had an error during a request and I did a new search for the same word, "nei".
And the search engine answered with:
Sorry, no results were found containing "nei"
So it's a bug, because I got thousands of results when I searched for "wikipedia".
Another one bites the dust
As a C# programmer, I frequently run searches on google with the keyword "C#" in the search. Google does a good job with it.
Microsoft's search engine on the other hand seems to toss out the "#" character which makes it pretty useless. Kind of funny given who created C#.
Guess I'll be sticking with google.
SEARCH TIPS
1) Check your spelling. Are the words in your query spelled correctly?
2) Try using synonyms. Maybe the site you're looking for uses slightly different words, like "film" instead of "movie".
3) Make your search more general. For example, instead of using specific product names, try using the generic product category.
for this search, err 2nd searchresult.
Real men are brave enough to use insecure browsers.
and the search engine said
You have entered a search term that is likely to return adult content.
Warning: If you are under 18 or live in an area where it is illegal for you to view explicit content, please revise your search.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Okay, having just gone to the search engine site and entering in simple words, I get one of three results:
They claim to have indexed billions of pages... billions of pages of what exactly?!?
To participate in a war, you need reliable weapons to stand a chance. Teoma, Yahoo, Google, etc... they all have viable search technologies. MSN's search engine at their beta site is comparable to a blunderbuss. Highly inaccurate, prone to misfirings, and just as predictable in results.
Some people say "linux" gets results and some people don't. When I ran a search just now, it didn't get any results. Then I got an error page.
I tried searching for my website with "polygon comics" which is indexed in every search engine. None on their beta engine.
I tried "palo alto car show", which is likewise indexed by every search engine out there. Also no results from the MSN beta search engine.
From the impressions posted by other people who have been trying the system, it sounds like when the MSN beta search system is working, it ranks based on domains, favouring cyber-squatters and basically giving you info which may not even be relevant to your search.
RELEVANCE is what is important in a search system. That is more than just matching keywords. If MSN hopes to launch their own search which doesn't depend on other peoples' more reliable search technologies, they will need to work a hell of alot harder than what they've put up on their beta site.
As a long time user of search engines, I think MSN beta is a piece of ****(replace with a four letter explative of your choosing).
Winged Power Photography
With all these people claiming that their first hit doesn't work, but subsequent hits do, could Microsoft be building their search with our queries? Tha more you make a request for a specific topic, the more results it feels that ineeds to find. The less important (queried) results don't show any results initially. So if we keep this up, Linux, Suse, and Porn wil be the most archived things the search engine knows how to find.
So compare then to now: you can't even get decent fucking search results of Microsoft's own support site from Microsoft itself. They can't even properly track their own content - how on earth can anyone trust them to track everyone elses? I work tech support a few days a week and I don't even think about using Microsoft's "search the knowledge base" page - it's often laughably short on search results even for well known things like "xp rpc exploit" and "download ie6."
When I can get proper tech support info on Microsoft's own products without having to go to Google and type site:microsoft.com THEN I'll start to believe this is like Netscape vs. Microsoft.
From msn:
cat returns "about 57,500,000" google pages.Uber-corporation Microsoft (c) announced a new search service today. Microsoft bigwig Steve Ballmer had this to say:
"Our new search engine is the ultimate in modern search technology. It indexes the entire internet and stores it in a Microsoft Access (tm) database. Users querying the engine for a given term (such as "linux") are given links to a random assortment of possibly-related sites."
(interviewer) Google's search is lauded as highly relevant and lightening fast. Yet you've innovated and taken a different course, returning random results. Why is this better than Google's method?
(S.B.) "Well, you have to keep in mind that our concern is the average windows user. We have discovered a flaw in Google's technology; the heavy reliance on research, strong programming and intelligence, while novel, has resulted in a system where relevant, useful results are returned very quickly."
(interviewer) ..and your method is better than this because...
(S.B.) "Ok. When someone searches on Google, they are limited to only relevant items, because that's what Google has latched onto. The weakness in Google's method is that most pages are not returned, because a machine has decided they are irrelevant. The new Microsoft (c) paradigm is that we let the USER decide what's relevant and what's not; the machine makes no determination of what is or is not relevant. See how it's better? Look, 99% of all computers in the world run Windows. And people don't mind rebooting, not at all. We've added value to this model, someone's got to do the work, why not just dump it on the user, let them take the blame? My porsche won't go any slower because someone else had to do extra work. That's the beauty of the Microsoft way (tm)! We let other people do all the work, then we take the credit."
(interviewer) But most people say they like Google specifically *because* it returns relevant terms so quickly.. aren't you just dumping all the work of searching back on the user's lap?
(S.B.) "You clearly are an enemy of innovation. Look, People are smarter than machines. Therefore, since a person can only view one page at a time, a person must view every existing web page to know whether or not their guess of which page is most relevant, is in fact true. And so, our search engine is better, because we don't prevent the user--"
(interviewer) Isn't this all just a semantic argument against your economic competitor and technological superior, Google?
(S.B.) "This interview is over."
A Microsoft Public Relations Representative did note that search terms pertaining to the purchase of goods and services did in fact not return random results, and in point of fact return only a single link, to www.microsoft.com.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Are they being choosy in deciding from whom they will accept feedback? When I click the "submit" button (using Firefox on Linux) nothing seems to happen except that an error message appears in the Javascript console: "Error: changeImage is not defined".
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
It seems they've some work to do in ordering their search results.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Microsoft's new search engine seems to duplicate "Google bombs".
A search for "miserable failure" or "weapons of mass destruction" yields the familiar results.
Microsoft's new search technology, however, has brought fame to latest most "talentless hack".
So, critics of google bombing won't find any relief from Microsoft...
Not that I post on slashdot or anything.
I tried typing in 'QGI', the acronmy for an open source project I started/dropped a few years ago, as a test. The first 5 ranked pages come up and point to www.quorumgroup.ca. The first ranked page was index.html, and the next four were single clicks off of index.html. Seems a bit redundant. Maybe I'm just picky, but I think the point of a search engine is variety.
"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!" ~8BT
I just ran a search on Microsoft's new search engine and I accidentally crashed the internet. My bad.
On an aside, the ulitimate combination would be in Google would buy Archive.org and you would be able to get a historical cache of every site on the web from the very beginning.
Also, I will find if very very hard to ever trust Microsoft to give me real, unbiased, un-pre-purchased search results. Google is equally a stockowner owned, megacorp, but (so far) they have shown a spirit of remaining honest and aboveboard. Microsoft definitely does not have this kind of rep ...
Sure, "rabbit" is a common term, but does that mean, that real users will actually search for it? Maybe the algorithm relies on more information, such as "rabbit breeding", or whatever. It's like searching for "computers", a virtually useless search. Creating a algorithm that works on common input, instead of ANY input, to improve results, might not be such a dumb thing. But who knows.
It's also likely, that the search returns so many hits, but they're all values so low, that no one stands out. Much like how the new MySQL searching works.
It's of course also possible that the algorithm is crap.
I tried to search for 'filip 600' - a model RC sailplane I'm flying now, and new MS engine came up with several directly relevant pages that I have never seen on Google. So far - extremely impressive!