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Microsoft Challenges Google
prostoalex writes "Microsoft's MSN division previewed a tool for desktop document search extending into the Web search, Reuters reports from Redmond, WA. The message to Google was clearly articulated in Steve Ballmer's speech: 'There's a lot of Google fascination out there and we share it, and we're going to compete. We're going to compete very, very hard.' Google News points to 63 more articles on the topics, MSN Newsbot provides tons of links as well. ComScore estimates Google's market share at 42.2%, Yahoo's at 38.8% and MSN's at 31.8% (numbers do not add up to 100%, since Internet users rely on multiple engines)."
I can't believe Yahoo is in the same ballpark as google! Better go check my rankings over there!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Yahoo...? MSN...? Links please....? :)
There's a typo right there. You misspelled "We're going to send jackbooted thugs to the google CO and we're going to hit their knees. We're going to break their knees very hard".
It's been a long time.
Just like Microsoft has became associated with "ease of use" (regardless of whether it's true), Google iw now associated with "accurate searches" in the mainstream media. It will be nearly impossible for Microsoft to over take them unless they have a truly revolutionary product - MSN only has such a high market share because it is IE's default homepage.
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Any Joe Sixpack who types in an incorrect domain name, because he's got too much BBQ Sauce on his fat fingers, does an MSN Search if there using IE.l..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
..by which they just dump money into their search engine until google fades away.
OR they force windows users to use their engine.
OR they do something else that's typical of m$.
Google embraces the things that geeks love to have in a company. This is something that Microsoft just doesn't get and will not in the near future, IMHO. The only ground that MS has to compete on is that of the "average" soccer mom computer user that doesn't know about Google.
I don't know how many times I've given out my gmail address to geeks the gotten the response "Oh, cool. Gmail!" But, to the average person, it just means nothing.
01000001 01011001 01000010 01000001 01000010 01010100 01010101
Quantity != quality. Especally on the Internet.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
That said, Microsoft has assured Google's success. Slaves across the world are looking for any alternative to M$. Linux hasn't pushed that envelope. But web services? Everyone can safely and easily embrace Google over M$ for web services. Make me choose between Google and M$ and I'll choose Google every time.
if so, who will use it?
but can it search my gmail?!
Joining the GPU and game-console wars this promises to be a battle of epic proportions. As far as I'm concerned, this is going to be great.
is because Yahoo is the Internet to many people - in Japan!
Gosh. I feel exhilerated every time I get to add "in Japan" to my posts. But seriously, Japanese is the second most prolific language on the Internet and Yahoo is the most popular search engine for Japanese surfers.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
So how much of that MSN percentage is coming from all the Internet Explorer users who automatically end up searching MSN whenever they mistype a web address etc.? Surely that's pushing the numbers up a little.
ITFacts.biz just gave results, with nothing on methodology (did they just count hits or what?)
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Microsoft has really never innovated but instead looked around at what was successful and duplicated it. The problem is, they often then bury the innovator in doing so. Now look at the state of the software industry. There are so players and innovation is stifled. I mean who wants to be Microsoft's R&D department. And they, in turn, have no one to duplicate. They think they're successful, but only in the near term. This type of scortched earth policy simply can't sustain itself.
Google is where it is, because its search engine is as objective as possible, without post-processing and/or filtering of the output.
MSN Search on the other hand, only returns whatever MS wants you to see.
Try yourself to look for, say, 'Linux' on MSN and on Google.
-P@
signal_connect(0, "test_top.dut.my_sig", "clk");
And in other google news you're not likely to see here on slash, the CFO of google is being investigated by the SEC. Seems his old employer, SkillSoft/SmartForce, had to restate...uh...3 and a half years of financial figures...something that earned them the loosing side of a $30M class action lawsuit.
Meet the new boss- same as the old boss.
Please help metamoderate.
Has anyone noticed just how bad the Windows search is, especially if you try to search for "a word or phrase in the file"? I've never got this to work, even in a directory full of files only containing the desired phrase thousands of times over. Apparently it will only search certain types of formats (I'll let you guess / tell me which ones)
Microsoft gets so many things wrong or misguided or sloppy on its own the first time they try them that I have no doubt they'll get this wrong too, unless they have, as the posters at WWDC dared them to, "started their photocopiers".
Nothing to see here.. Yet.
-- Maciek
Even more detailed preview of new MS search technology.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How many freaking ways can microsoft implement search without infringing on Google's IP? Which means their search is never be better than google's or remotely close. The only choice is to muscle Google out of the game. Can they do it? No one knows. Wait a few years.
He's dead right.
Get ready to kiss Google goodbye. The only thing keeping it in the number one spot is habit. Once MS decides to implement a new integrated search function in its software, users will form a new habit and begin to use it instead. It happened when IE surplanted Netscape and it'll happen to Google. Don't believe me? I remember when AltaVista was the only serious search engine. Then I switched to Yahoo! Then came Google. Does the Slashdot crowd truly believe it was all going to end with Google? lol.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Why does my brain hurt when I ponder the thought of a Microsoft search engine providing unbiased results?
This looks an awful lot like the big push for push technologies several years back, there was no real need then and the market collapsed. Users just didn't want content shoved down their throats. Likewise I doubt users want new tools shoved onto their desktops (Longhorn) that do things they don't need.
I don't know how many times I've given out my gmail address to geeks the gotten the response "Oh, cool. Gmail!" But, to the average person, it just means nothing.
Let me get this straight: you are claiming that the fact that Google has no name-recognition with the average person is some sort of advantage in ensuring the majority market share?
Google embraces the things that geeks love to have in a company. This is something that Microsoft just doesn't get and will not in the near future, IMHO. The only ground that MS has to compete on is that of the "average" soccer mom computer user that doesn't know about Google.
There are more "average soccer moms" then "geeks". If Google concentrated on embracing things that geeks love and Microsoft has superior name recognition among soccer moms, Google will lose.
GMD
watch this
Apple did this awhile back with Sherlock... 1997, I think? On my computer, though, (200 MHz 603e) it was abyssimally slow. Apparently you can still do this and more with Apple's new Sherlock in OSX. It would be nice to integrate the Finder search with email search, but I'm pretty happy with Apple Mail's search capabilities as it is...
Why doesn't microsoft just buy Google?
I control many sites with hundreds of thousands of visitors a day. Here are the stats for search engine referers:
google.com (54.8%)
yahoo.com (10.3%)
msn.com (4.2%)
aol.com (2.3%)
ask.com (1.8%)
disclaimer: MSN and Yahoo are inflated because of Overture PPC traffic.
Now I only use google though, because msn search sucks. And I don't use IE either.
Find documents on the web with worms/trojans/virii and open them for you. How thoughtful!
Keep track of your favorite searches, so when it is exploited someone can sell this for marketing
Like the Windows search it will use up about 90% of your CPU while running, because Microsoft still doesn't get the multitasking thing.
Won't have multiple exclusions, so you always waste time searching through directories where you shouldn't be looking.
Will be too ambitious, searching multimedia, etc.
Will focus on Microsoft Friends first, 'inadvertently' avoid Microsoft Enemies ('Honest, we wouldn't have it avoid OSS/Linux/Sun/etc. sites, we'll look into it right away!'
Will be built into all office products, thus bloating them further, introducing more instability and requiring numbnut PHB's to shell big zorkmids to, yet again, upgrade.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's Microsoft language for "we're going to engage in illegal product tying until they're dead".
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
So tell me MS, how much are you charging for this search ability? :) Can't release it free, that would way too cheap.
I like muppets.
And if MS adds more "mistyped web address" style MSN redirects around the OS, which I interpret to be what ballmer means by "compete very hard", I imagine that'll push the numbers up a lot more.
Think about this MSN in its crappy state that its in right now has 31%. Thats incredible, considering how terrible it is at finding relevent information. If they make it anywhere near Google or Yahoo's quality they will end up crushing them.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I'd be interested to know what the average search time (AST) per user was for the different search engines.
I use google quite actively. Google toolbar in Firefox, etc etc. But you have to admit, the google system, while it might be "the best" engine out there, does pretty much suck.
There are entirely too many stores being used in the search engine for results. You want to look up information for a DVD player model # and you'll get hundreds, if not thousands of links to stores before anything else.
And God knows how many sites are just spam houses instead of actual sites with content. I can't even name how many times I've searched for something, clicked the link to see something like "The Bottled Water Taco Bell is great with Viagra Dell Computers. It adds 100 to your Microsoft Xbox Vivid Video while your Sony Cable Descrambler downloads FREE SOFTWARE! cock shit pussy cunt fuck lesbian girl girl shit black interracial anal"
Google needs some competition, because they've been stagnating for way too long.
Applicant: Microsoft Invention: Method of searching documents on a computer information system and interactively displaying results. Patent Clerk Comments: DENIED. Previous art: "grep -R" Slashdot users, stop e-mailing me.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
This is very off topic, and has nothing really to do with this so I'm posting without the karma bonus, but... I've been reading alot of fark.com along with slashdot for the past year (longer than that actually, but still)...Anyone who has read fark knows that the headlines come with little pictures beside them that say things like "Scary" or "Hero" or "Florida".
Well, when I saw this headline the first thing that I pictured in my head was a giant "UNLIKELY" image lol...
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
http://www.ok-cancel.com/archives/week_2004_07_16. html
MSN Search percentage *does* include all those mistyped strings. They've got a harder slog ahead of them than the numbers might seem to indicate.
Plenty of people. There's literally millions of people who need to find Windows bug and sploit fixes, driver updates and Office workarounds.
I, for one, welcome our new Redmond search overlord.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Since cygwin grep is nearly always faster when looking for something in documents on my windows machine, why in the world would I ever think microsoft knows how to search anything?
Trivial search tasks take forever with windows find for no discernable reason.
Looks like Google will be sueing Microsoft for anti-competive practices in the near future.
Maybe they shouldn't have give all that cash to the shareholders so soon.
From a technology perspective, Microsoft cannot compete with google.
The problem is the culture of Microsoft. All outside ideas are rejected. You are a worthless grunt until you have worked at Microsoft at least 4-6 years.
It doesn't matter how much experience you have at other companies. So assume MSFT hires 5 top guys from google.
They will get inside the company and the manager/architect with 10 years experience drawing icons will override all their technical input.
That's the Microsoft way. And it sucks to work here.
Although you may not agree with his point, its not flamebait.
"Buy him out boys ... muhahahahahaha"
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't
But this scares me, like linux should scare Microsoft. The problem is that as long as Microsoft controls the root of people's machines, they can put there search ahead of google.
In other words, if people turn on there machine, and find a search box right on the desktop, they are going to start using that first before heading over to google. I really believe that the "average" (that's not the /. community) person won't give a damn about accurate results, because they won't be able to tell the difference. If that is the case, then Microsoft will have 0 problem overtaking google.
I hope that I'm not giving the average person enough credit to tell the difference between an accurate result and a non accurate result. Then again, I've seen news reporters claim that because they typed in the word "Botox" into google, that there are 750,000 sites of doctors that do Botox work. You would think that a reporter would be able to understand the basics of how a search engine works. They should obviously be a little smarter then the average bear.
Then again, I guess not.
-asoap
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
I think anyone who pays >$100 per share for a peice of Google is nuts. http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journali d=22356775&brk=1. They are #1 and only have direction to go.
History will repeat itself, remember when Web Crawler was king, then Yahoo tookover and looked to be "unstoppable".
If msn.com wasn't the default website for IE, this number would be in the single digits.
Nothing can challenge Google, at least not from company monkeymen from places like Microsoft. Nothing is going to approach the level of name recognition or simplicity. If it does, by that time Windows will probably be bug-free, too.
I could've sworn whitehouse.gov had been hacked... I was about to show everyone around me.
w00t. Well, I guess these guys would be out of business without those browser hijacks eh?
It has been shown in the past when Microsoft bought Hotmail, they tried several times to put Microsoft NT servers in place of the *NIX servers it ran on. I don't know what the current state of Hotmail is now, but last I remember hearing was the best MS could do was to put an NT box up front for the UI stuff and left *NIX handling the load of mail I/O.
I cannot imagine what A MS version of Google would run on... could it really be 2003 server or whatever?
"numbers do not add up to 100%, since Internet users rely on multiple engines"
Well then, if the numbers don't add up to 100% then they're not percentages. Simply put. Idiots.
Surely they must be comparing "total usage" of google vs "total usage" of yahoo and msn. Both wait, all google has is searches. What does yahoo have? matching making, chat, and sex groups! What does msn have? match making, chat, and sex groups! Yet, even without these, google shows searching alone is more popular on the internet than sex! wow!
Developers, developers, developers, developers...
DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!!!11ONEONE
-Shteeve
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
ComScore estimates Google's market share at 42.2%, Yahoo's at 38.8% and MSN's at 31.8% (numbers do not add up to 100%, since Internet users rely on multiple engines)."
"This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Since Microsoft keeps changing their (Word) DOC format, and hasn't documented it completely, does that give them an advantage over Google, and others, in searching that type of data?
--
make install -not war
that if Google has any sense, they'll try to start donating money in an attempt to influence the November elections... so that they can try to ensure once Microsoft's "competitive" push against them begins sometime next year, the person running the executive branch of the United States of America is someone who actually believes in, you know, ENFORCING our antitrust laws...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
There is an open-source app that does local email searches very well... I think it was originally developed for the Mac but it's been ported to Windows and possibly Linux. I had a link to it, but lost it. Anyone knows what I'm talking about? I'd appreciate a link or at least a name...
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Firefox does practically the same thing, except it searches google by default.
I just did that search, and the results from MSN are
1) Linux.org
2) Linux.com
3) redhat.com
4) kernel.org
5) debian.org
Google?
1) Linux.org
2) Linux.com
3) redhat.com
4) suse.com/us
5) linux-mandrake.com
Since the average joe never looks beyond the first page of links, where is the problem? I dislike MSN as much as the next guy, but I don't see them spreading FUD through their search engine.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
"...we share it, and we're going to compete."
... "We don't care. We don't have to. We're Microsoft."
Translation: "We're going to leverage our usual 'bundle it with the OS' approach, because we just can't stand the fact that someone other than us is making money with technology. And if users get annoyed because their two-year-old computer slows down from all the constant indexing of local content, too bad. Keeping our monopoly is more important than delivering the end user experience you want."
As always
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Also consider that many people do not use MSN search by choice; it is integrated into internet explorer.
The same could be said of firefox; google is integrated there, so perhaps as more people switch to firefox, we will see the google numbers climb?
I'd really like to see a better study than this one. This is a very interesting topic.
If you are choosing your services based on branding then you are just as ignorant as those soccer moms who run IE because it is set by default. Don't be driven by marketing sizzle.
Use a product for what it actually does not becuase it's popular. That being said, Google still seems to have the best search engine. If that changes, I'll change my search engine, even if it's to the MSN home page.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
familiar.
No one can blame Apple for being a little prophetic.
--
MS simply will bundle its search engine into the OS and that will be the end of the story. Its a sad fact of life that most people will not change the default anything on Windows.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Kent Brockman: The results are in: for Sideshow Bob, one hundred percent; and for Joe Quimby, one percent. And we remind you there is a one percent margin of error.
I hope their search results don't take as long as their product release cycle.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
I'm not choosing services based on branding. I said nothing about branding. My choice is based on morals. It's like choosing to shop at Costco instead of Sam's Club. Maybe all you see is two store names. I see one company that treats its employees as valuable and another that treats them as cattle. When I look at M$ and Google I'm looking at their business practices, not their names.
are from mistyped URLs in IE that go to msn search?
"...and MSN's at 31.8%..."
I hate that they count those at "searches".
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
...or Microogle?
They bundled IE with Windows to crush Netscape.
Now they're bundling a web search into the desktop to crush Google.
If MS really wanted to be innovative they would
let the user choose one or more search engin(s)
to use with this feature.
I hear the comparison to Netscape and I think to myself why I switched to IE 4 from Netscape 4, because Netscape 4 crashed about every 20 minutes and supported even less than IE 4. Netscape died because they put out a crappy product for 2 years.
And it needs to act fast. I think Google needs to take over the browser of as many Windows machines as possible. We need a GoogleFox 1.0 and we want it now! Please let it be google that wins!
Me too I have enough spare time, and have just found out that something is terribly wrong out there... expanding your investigation I searched for "windows" on both of them... guess what happened...
MSN : Results 1-15 of about 34568019 containing "windows"
Google : Results 1 - 100 of approximately 121,000,000 for windows. (0.22 segundos)
I guess google are being seduced by the dark side ???
... from the forgotten corner in europe
This is not a new idea. Read this Wired.com piece, Google vs. Evil. Subhead: "Now the geek icon is finding that moral compromise is just the cost of doing big business." Or anti-Google sites like Google Watch. I'm not saying Google is evil, but they're doing things that start to raise eyebrows.
Anyone ever try to search for the "best search engine" on the Web. I find that Google and MSN have something interesting to say about that.
Not even Google presumes to put themselves as the first search result (a.k.a. the "I'm Feeling Lucky" link). The winner is a somewhat informative article that breaks down each engines strength depending on what you are looking for.
Not so at MSN. Google Google Google. That is their chant for the best engine. Now is that a bug or a feature?
I don't think it's unreasonable to state as fact that Google is better than MSN and will be for at least the near future.
even if MSN could get their speed and accuracy comparable to Google, they will NEVER produce such a clean and simple interface as Google because it just isn't what they do.
and even if they did, I'd still use Google because it's integrated into Firefox. even if hell froze over and they integrated it into Firefox, I'd still stick with Google because I trust them more than MS.
basically, MS is unwilling and/or unable to provide what I want. I will continue to use Google, just like I will continue to use linux. and to be honest I don't give a sh*t what the "average user" uses. whether Google has 1% or 100% market share, I will be one of the ones using it.
maybe if lots of "ignorant" people start using MSN, tw*t webmasters will focus on cheating their algorithm instead of Google's and it will get even better?
...but the Average User (like, my mom) has a lot of trouble. She can never seem to remember where she saved something, or what she named it.
I have had the same problem with the family members I support who use windows. I agree that a decent search engine on the home machine would be nice. The only problem is that having stuff spread out all over the place makes backups a bloody nightmare and reliance on a search engine would compound the problem. Of course if backups don't matter for the user in question, or if you simply back up everything (which means you have more bandwidth and hard drive space than me) what I'm talking about doesn't matter.
The best solution I've been able to come up with is to create a directory called documents and then create shortcuts to it from *everywhere*. My Documents, Favorites, any program that likes to save files in its own directory, the desktop, etc... all have a link to this documents folder. Then I spend a bit of time training the family member to always click on the documents folder before saving anything. I also show them how to create new folders and rename files, though this gets ignored by some.
Sure, sometimes they screw it up, so I have to clean up after them a bit (especially if they install something) but it's usually not too hard since they try to follow instructions when possible. The best thing is that I only have to back up documents plus a handful of other folders (usually email related) which they don't touch to keep things together.
Then do not load your browser to www.yahoo.com(the Yahoo portal with a search engine box) go to the search engine: search.yahoo.com
I like Yahoo's search interface even more than Google's.
shit, boy, I came to *that* conclusion with find (sic) in ms-dos over 15 fucking years ago.
There is no way I would ever believe that more than 30 percent of searching on the net is done with an abysmally poor search tool such as msn. Yahoo is not much better. I might believe 95% Google, 10% Yahoo, and 2% MSN (Numbers do not add up to 100 due to multiple searches)
So, Microsoft re-packages Grep with a GUI, and suddenly this is news?
What am I missing?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Shouldn't this article have gotten the MS logo instead of the Google one?
Searching for files locally/on lan works OH SO WELL, so now MS wants to essentially add a simple layer that "extends" the metaphor to "embrace" web-searching as well?
Great lah-dee-dah.
That in turn is a large part of the popularity of the GPL. Microsoft can't appropriate GPL'ed code. They can distribute it, just like anyone else can, and they do. But they can't kill the organization that actually produces it. They can't prevent users from extending it.
In the long run, open source can outlive its original owner. The current controversy over X and the FreeS/WAN transition to Openswan both illustrate that.
Also, Linux *caugh Debian* is gaining enough marketshare that it is a very real threat on Microsoft's radar. As that continues to ascend, there will be a lot of people w/o MS search integrations. Moreover, IE has begun to go south in marketshare. People are realizing that there are some badass alternatives to IE and even without being marketed to use them by any form other than word of mouth. People may extend this logic to software beyond the web market, and who knows, maybe one day people will be comfortable with the .swx format.
That's a very interesting idea, and as an Apple user I'd certainly like to see more alliances of that sort. However, I question the practicality of an Apple-Google relationship, because Apple clearly is already working on their own desktop search functions to integrate into Tiger. Why gerry-rig someone else's program to fit your needs when you can write your own from scratch?
That being said, maybe Apple could use something like Google's algorithms for ranking results, so that the more useful documents get returned first. Not sure how well that would translate to the desktop, however. After all, Google does what it does so well because it relies on PageRank. There's no similar hyperlink structure among documents on a hard drive. The only thing you could maybe base a ranking system on would be the number of times a specific document has been opened. (But maybe Tiger already has something like that, I don't know.)
also titled:
.coms (froogles) from disabled folks, what with all the stock markup FraUD billyonerror execrable felons courting them?
morons challenge robbIE's PostBlock censorship devise (Score:mynuts won, enemIEs of the slate?)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 30, @01:29PM (#9845659)
no contest, it still sucks too.
could have been titled:
corepirate nazis to deliver even more minimum wage hostages, kode blew? long, or short horn, either way it hurts, a lot.
yikes?
those googlers shouldn't have to go about trying to steal
what say you to that robbIE?
Slashdot, where Windows users go for all their Microsoft news! There are at least three Microsoft news postings every day, most of them innaccurate or incendiary.
Isn't there anything going on in the OSS world? What about those new GNOME 2.8 screenshots that were posted on OSNews? How about something regarding the kernel? Anything at all?
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
Oops, had that wrong. Drummond is "vice president for corporate development, secretary, and general counsel" for Google.
Please help metamoderate.
In a massive, huge, prolonged test (I compared MSN and Google searches for the terms best browser and browser) I was expecting to see a bias toward Microsoft on MSN, and no bias on Google. While I did find the bias toward MS, I also found what I took to be a bias against Microsoft on Google!
MSN search for best browser:
- www.anybrowser.org/campaign
- www.microsoft.com/ie
- www.microsoft.com/windows/ie
- www.netscape.com
- www.mozilla.org
(Seems biased toward Microsoft)Google search for best browser:
- www.opera.com/
- www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
- www.pcworld.com/reviews/ article/0,aid,110653,pg,11,00.asp
- www.theinquirer.net/?article=17382
- macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/19/148223
(no link to a Microsoft or MSN site in the first 50 results)MSN search for browser:
- explorer.msn.com/home.htm
- www.mozilla.org
- www.microsoft.com/windows/ie
- www.opera.com
- www.netscape.com
(Gee, MSN appears first? Other than that blatant plug, it seems fairly reasonable.)Google search for browser:
- www.mozilla.org/
- www.opera.com/
- wp.netscape.com/computing/download/
- www.avantbrowser.com/
- lynx.browser.org/
(no mention of IE until the 11th entry--after Lynx for goodness sake--"It's the single most popular browser in the world!")J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
(numbers do not add up to 100%, since Internet users rely on multiple engines)
:)
No, that's a lie. I only use Google.
How interesting that this comes announced by Apple after Microsoft's WinFS technologies were introduced to the world.
I expect the KDE/GNOME rip-offs in the next few years as well. And then when it's all over, I fully expect nobody to give credit to Microsoft for spurring the idea, and Slashdot to continue to label Microsoft as a non-innovator. Coming from people using KDE taskbars, KDE start menus, and even KDE integrated filesystem/browsers.
goo-gooed vs. evile?
.coms (froogles) from disabled folks, what with all the stock markup FraUD billyonerror execrable felons courting them?
also titled:
morons challenge robbIE's PostBlock censorship devise (Score:mynuts won, enemIEs of the slate?)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 30, @01:29PM (#9845659)
no contest, it still sucks too.
could have been titled:
corepirate nazis to deliver even more minimum wage hostages, kode blew? long, or short horn, either way it hurts, a lot.
yikes?
those googlers shouldn't have to go about trying to steal
consult with/trust in yOUR creators... challenging unprecedented evile since/until forever. see you there?
How exactly did we (and by that I assume you mean the US DoJ) actually "nail" Microsoft? Last I heard, they got off with nothing more than a light slap on the wrist. They haven't changed their predatory business practices one bit since then, either.
For details, google for "Microsoft Search Engine".
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Why can you go to Google and get a search of the web on "engines" in less than second, but when you do a search on your hard drive, it takes 10 minutes? Can you answer that question?
Of course you don't see a need for it--you're not thinking ahead or thinking practically. When everyone has 200 and 300GB hard drives and wants to find all documents on their computer having to do with "guitars," have fun with your brute-force method while the rest of us get feedback results in 2 seconds. I already have a massive "Stuff" folder with a bunch of my crap in it. It'll be nice to just have a *.MPC result window open to play my music, or look for all the digital pictures on my computer taken after last Wednesday that are over 25kb in size.
How you can't see why this would be useful, well, I just can't figure out.
When looking for information on MSDN a survey popped up. I thought wow, I get to tell thim how much their search sucks finally. So I did and in the comments wrote that they should use get google to do their search so it might actually work. Sorry everyone -_-
1. Stop sitting on all that cash, and begin paying out $75 billion as well as buy back large portion of outstanding shares, thereby reverting to an image of a company greatful for its stockholders, that pays out.
2. Continue creating media presence with the money pit that is MSNBC
3. Reemerge as a product standard in other markets where computers are replacing current devices (television, applicances) Let's just see how Microsoft can compete.
[Please sign here]
Do you mean Lookout, that MS recently bought (available here),
Is based on the open source lucent.net
That's it. It worked against netscape. All they did was make the OS a web browser, now, all they have to do is make The OS a search box. Done. Finished. Look at how F****** Worthless search is in windows XP. I have not yet figured it out, and I have been playing with that stupid dog for 2 years.
Google's main hope is to control the market for supplying results to other places. They can use RSS for website integration, SMS for mobile phones, voice for telephones. This won't help them this year or the next, but it will save them over the long term.
I cant help but wonder what would be the impact on the internet as a whole if Microsoft were to take over google's position.
.. who knows ?
.iso 's is a filtered search term; and its impossible to find an alternative unbiased search engine because MSN decided to omit those results from your search.
here are a few random thoughts and speculative stab's in the dark.
I think that the first sign of a downward turn in googles fortune might be an increased reliance on advertising. Advertising on google is handled very well. As soon a someone like Microsoft start to eat into google's revenue margins; I'd predict google depending more and more on advertising to recoup the losses. In turn that will drive users away. In other words competition from Microsoft could make google shit.
Joe Sixpack , Soccer Mom, and Fred Bloggs; dont care about unbiased and accurate results will continue to use MSN Search none the wiser. They will never have the pain of even knowing or understanding that their default search engine is a hodge, podge of paid-for rankings and Market Influencing (In the favor of big corps) search filters. They'll never question otherwise, they dont expect anything else.
There is'nt a whole lot that can be done by us geeks to avoid the sad fact that there are more dumb computer users than there are geeks, hackers and developers. Sure Sys Admins and "Local Geek's" can continue to install systems for businesses and friends and set Google up to be the default home page, but if the time comes when google is not a sound choice any more then what ?
Very few people realise the importance of Googles unbiased and accurate search result. Its impact however is much more than that. It is, in effect a gateway to the internet, to such an extent that some people regard google as "the internet".
I think that if Microsoft were allowed to dominate the Search world its impact on the internet as a whole would be far reaching and difficult to imagine. Its not just a case of anti-microsoft on my part; but I feel that we cannot allow a corporation , any corporation (not just microsoft) that has its fingers in so many pies to distort the only remaining level playing field we have left. Nobody should have the right to pick, choose, and influence Internet search to the kind of degree that MSN does and will. It is giving up control and giving up freedom. Its just a terrible thing that so many people who live in this world have the belief that we live in a free world; when quite frankly we dont. Many people might say but we do live in a free world (well most people in the western world!); that is just perception, and so long as there are people that perceive they live in freedom there will be less reason for them to fight for the cause of true freedom. Maybe when they start to realise that every where they go and everything they , and every eletronics gizmo they buy has Microsoft stamped on it; they might start to think about freedom and choice again
Imagine a world without google, where search results filter out websites such as this one, or those of people developing Open Source Programs? Imagine a world where searching for
Okay these thoughts may be a tad sensationalist. But if just one or two of those things happened on however small a scale. Ask yourself , who to do you want to trust today ?
Nick...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
For the last year, search results have been close to useless for me, because I often get those "search_term_in_url.html" results. Google's algorithm places higher relevance on pages whose filenames contain your search terms, so this gets me a lot of completely irrelevant junk sites that are just spamming Google with their ugly URL names.
Google should disregard URL filenames. It's the content of the site that matters, right? Not the filename. Google does need some competition, and I bet Microsoft is just smart enough to provide.
Also, I wonder if anyone's made the connection that the new MSN search and the WinFS local search in Longhorn will probably share technologies? You'll probably be searching the web and searching your hard drive using the same engine.
I use yahoo for email and sometimes for online games, but always use Google for searching.
Not that anyone cares.
I hope Micro$oft looses.
It should be followed by "Next Year" as they have been making the same stupid promisses for the last ten years. "An Integrated Browser.", "All of your data at your fingertip." Yawn. Yet all they can do is put other people, who deliver on those promisses, out of business. They could not buy Google, so they will break them if they can.
This time, I think they are up against something that's bigger than they are. They squashed OS/2 by making it more expensive than winblows. IBM could not do much about that with cross licensed and closed source code. Having vanquished reasonable competition on commodity hardware, they were free to crush Netscape because people felt they had no alternative to M$'s OS. All that's changed today. It's easy to swap the OS right out from under M$ and word is getting out that Microsoft is nothing but pain to the user. M$ wanted the world to be it's slave but the world has other ideas.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hotmail's been running on Windows servers for a long time now. Lots of rumors flew around about FreeBSD, but those were mostly relegated to Slashdot posts (of course).
Microsoft's been pretty open about the conversion process they undertook. They even wrote a paper about it and released it online.
The price of a share is immaterial. What counts is how much you expext to make off that share in dividends and price increases. For example, Bershire Hathaway shares are around $87k with a P/E that is better than Microsoft's, which is trading at around $28.6 today.
In any case, with a P/E over 30 MSFT is not a great deal these days... I'm starting to think people are brain damaged if they buy it. Google can justify a slightly inflated P/E if you believe they'll figure out how to make more money in the future. With Gmail, local searches... I think there's a reasonnable case to be made.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I'm very conservative. My knowledge of economic theory (Adam Smith, etc.) informs me that monopolies shouldn't be able to go into new markets willy-nilly (this, XBox, etc.).
If the government won't step in (which they should be cautious to do), can a Sony or a Google sue Microsoft to keep them from using their hoards of monopoly cash to compete against them.
Stupidity is one of Mark Twain's three great ruling powers (the other two being greed and fear).
He listed stupidity last, though I wonder if it might not be the primary dominating force.
The end result of all this will be: the stupid people will get what they are told to want, the geeks will suffer for it, and the world will move on.
I control 5 domains with a few thousand visitors per day (nothing like the traffic you have!), but I figured I'd chuck my results in too:
Google (74.96%)
Yahoo (16.06%)
MSN (4.79%)
I, too, was shocked by those market share numbers!
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
In a massive, huge, prolonged test (I compared MSN and Google searches for the terms best browser and browser) I was expecting to see a bias toward Microsoft on MSN, and no bias on Google. While I did find the bias toward MS, I also found what I took to be a bias against Microsoft on Google!
No, I doubt that you were seeing an anti-MS bias on Google.
Google special magic is the way that it weights *links* to pages. This lets the web in general be the arbiter of what constitutes a good hit for, say, "browser" - if lots and lots of pages link to it using the word "browser", then it is probably a good hit.
All your test showed is that when people mention "browser" or "best browser", that they are more likely to be linking to Opera or Mozilla then to IE. Read into that what you will (if you are pro-MS, tell yourself that most IE users think of IE as the internet, not a browser, and they hardly need a link to it, because they already have it and it is all that they know).
If anything, Apple ripped off Microsoft's idea. Not that it will change Slashdotter minds or anything, but sorry, WinFS was announced years ago.
They have the Google Toolbar which does track usage if "advanced" features are on. And they have their non-expiring cookie. If you don't think that google knows exactly who you are when you submit a search you need to get a clue.
I type in something to search and it looks at everything, address book, notes, documents everything! MS isn't innovating.
If I were an e-retailer, I'd pay much morefor a geek over a soccer mom to visit my website. The geek would actually know how to use the site once they got there and feel comfortable making purchases.
Additionally, who spends more time on the web? A geek or a soccer mom? Is search measure in volume or number of unique people?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Why Google would try to compete with MS on the desktop is beyond me. They have the greatest distributed file system (or "super computer") in commercial use today (see gmail). Challenging MS on the desktop would put to sleep Google's best asset, which COULD be used compete WITH the OS instead of having to DEPEND on it. Google WILL become the next Netscape if they don't leverage the tools they already have. Here's a thought: Google has a complete copy of the internet under their roof; why not build on that vision? 1 GB email is great... why not 20GB of "free" file storage? Use their massive distributed capabilities to get off of the desktop instead of developing new technologies to get on it.
M$ taking a serious stab at internet searching? This will obviously fail when every one search out of five returns:
1 result(s):
0xD734EA7 Unhandled exception
Then the "report this problem to Microsoft" window pops up.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
Any time the news talks about a searching for something on-line they use the phrase "google it." Even my second semester English teacher talked about using Google. This is why "google" is now a recognized verb.
Gmail on the other hand may not be known to the "average" user but that's completely Google's fault. They aren't out there advertising it to Joe User. As soon as they start putting it on the front page of their search engine they'll get brand recognition there as well.
MS only has an advantage if they put out a much better product.
Unless Google starts charging for a premium version of GMail they're going to have to be very cautious about making it public. MS and Yahoo have no trouble charging people and have no trouble getting people to pay. GMail so far relies completely on ads and Google has to ensure that the ad revenue covers costs or their own popularity could be the death of them.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Glad you find my comment interesting. I wanted to address some points you made.
Why gerry-rig someone else's program to fit your needs when you can write your own from scratch?
I think the issue at hand is that computer-wide searches will be much more relevant the more closely they can be tied to the OS. For example, updating the index when a file changes would be easiest if you can get notifications from the base level. As such, Google doesn't have a consumer OS, only Microsoft and Apple do. I'm disregarding Linux for now as I don't find it "consumer ready," but I do run it along with Mac OS X myself.
That being the case, Google can choose to write its own desktop search, without direct access to an OS, or it can choose to partner. An Apple partnership makes more sense to me than a Microsoft one. Sure, Apple has done a lot of work in this area, but the point of the partnership is to bring two companies together. Google, I'm sure, could come up with some killer ideas for Spotlight, and Spotlight could have a "Powered by Google" logo slapped on it. Its a win for both Google and Apple. In addition, searches done locally could be linked to Google with a simple button click (I'm thinking the arrow iTunes uses to go to artist and album pages on the store).
The page rank doesn't translate directly to most local documents, but that leaves room for innovation. Based on personal habits, I usually have related documents open at the same time. Keeping statistics of what documents are open at the same time, and cross-referencing that info, could lead to a pseudo-PageRank sort of indexing scheme. That's just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
It is great, which is why it's there- but it's not mine, much as I would love to take credit for it. I guess I should probably make a note of that if there's enough room...
Please help metamoderate.
...that Microsoft seems to always be playing catchup these days. They have $50billion in liquid assets just sitting around, collecting dust, and what do they do? They go and find pre existing markets to enter into. They don't seem to be doing anything to create new markets...
how many IT Oriented markets can the world support? Are they smarter than us and realize that there aren't any worthwhile markets to enter in to? Who knows... As long as I never pick up a bottle that says "Old Microsoft Brewing Company, Redmond, WA"
MSN Search is for the people who don't change their IE start page (if they use IE at all), or people that entered mistyped domains that haven't been taken by the cybersquatters and porn redirectors. Yahoo! is used by Joe Surfer for ease of use. I use Yahoo! Mail and Briefcase for homework, but I personally prefer Google as a search engine. Google is used by the web-surfers who know what they're doing and want to find what they're looking for. Everything else (Excite, Lycos) is just niche surfing.
string google_link = BuildGoogleAddress(search_term);
string google_res = GetGoogleResults(google_link);
InsertIntoMSNResults(google_res);
InsertIntoMSNResults(google_link);
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Sam's Club/Walmart and their employment practices, from what I've heard, are not good, and those stores, from what I've read, are bad for communities.
Now I've also heard that CompUSA is a bad place to work, and when I walk into a CompUSA store, I can feel that. It doesn't feel like the people working there are happy. But a Walmart, for whatever reason, feels to the shopper like a happy place, like they and the workers are all a big community of saving money. Regardless of the reality of the thing.
It's tricky to figure out just who the good guy is all the time. I've heard that working for Google rocks; I also think they've done good things for Internet advertising and are trying to innovate usefully in all of their lesser-known search projects. Don't think most people really care much about those things, and I don't really think there are that many people who are just dying to escape Microsoft.
It's still beta, and yea, it does copy Google, but blanket statements about Microsoft almost never work:
even if MSN could get their speed and accuracy comparable to Google, they will NEVER produce such a clean and simple interface as Google because it just isn't what they do.
http://beta.search.msn.com
Kent Brockman: The results are in: for Sideshow Bob, one hundred percent; and for Joe Quimby, one percent. And we remind you there is a one percent margin of error.
Alright, WHO moderated THAT insightful??? Please leave your badge with the security officer at the front desk, so that it can be, uhh, laminated. You heard me.
How interesting that this comes announced by Apple after Microsoft's WinFS technologies were introduced to the world.
Your point actually might have some teeth to it if Spotlight were not something Apple was messing around with ten years ago or so (Rhapsody), Mr MS Fanboy.
Also of course, it shows an utter lack of understanding of what Spotlight IS and what it DOES - rather than try to make the filesystem a full-on relational database (which is not a very good idea in practice) Spotlight instead sits over any exiting FS and searches metsadata in files by plugins. Plus of course the interface is actually usable as per Apples normal modus operandi.
If a filesystem as DB were a good idea, Oracle would own the world by now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft integrates this "technology" into their OS so that the "user experience" will be improved. Seems like the standard way in which Microsoft abuses its monopoly position.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
One thing I haven't found was HOW did Google end up setting 100+ dollars per share? If a dutch auction was really used, who bid it up that high?
I wish Google the best of luck, but dollar for dollar on earnings, there are many far better stock deals out there.
add a login and let me bookmark results so that whenever I login to Google from anywhere I can see my previous searches and bookmarked results grouped in a way that I specify
Unless they provide a search engine that gives unbiased results, without flooding the page with annoying flash / other graphical ads that annoy, they won't get far.
At the same time I welcome this, both parties will get better.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
It's time to apply some real effort.
Phleease! How can I trust MS to accurately search the internet if the local disk search is faulty? Am I the only one that has problems searching the HD in WinXP? The new and "improved" search is very annoying (almost regret switching from W2000) and also not able to search in (some) files. There is even a KB article about this http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB; EN-US;309173
Not that I don't believe MS is able to successfully compete in any domain they want...
Its a fact that Google has better programmers then Microsoft. Onlything MS got on Google is enivornment staff. That's it!
Isn't firefox basically netscape? And hasn't the latest round of viruses pushed huge swathes of users to switch back to something safer?
It seems Apple and Microsoft are thinking a lot alike these days. (What with Apple threatening to sue RealMedia over DRM.)
danharan : "In any case, with a P/E over 30 MSFT is not a great deal these days... I'm starting to think people are brain damaged if they buy it. Google can justify a slightly inflated P/E if you believe they'll figure out how to make more money in the future"
You gotta be kidding dude!
Microsoft is returning to the tune of $75 BILLION to shareholders right now, starting with a special dividend of $3 per share in December this year.
My 2000 shares in Microsoft is paying me to the tune of $6000 in CASH in December alone! And that is just for starters!
About the best investment one can make right now is buy Microsoft shares today and collect over 10% in dividends in December, plus another doubling of the normal dividends paid quarterly, plus Microsoft is spending another $30 billion in share buy back programs to stoke up the share price even more!
By contrast, Google is massively overpriced. Only a fool will buy Google at the set share price, and a of course a fool and his money are very soon separated.
The internet share business changes leadership all the time, We had Yahoo leading, then we had AltaVista leading, then we had Goto.com, etc etc.
Google doesn't have instant messenger, like yahoo and Microsoft, they don't have web groups, they don't t have personal home pages or business home pages, they have basically nothing but search, in which Yahoo and Microsoft are fast catching up with them, and yet Google is priced about the same as Yahoo's market cap. How crazy is that?
Buy Google and watch your money turn into ashes, just like the internet bubble of the late 90's.
Its that simple!!
Doesn't this seem like an attempt to drive down Google's stock (once it's trading) ? Google's ability to compete/succeed depends on how much cash they have. MS seems to be trying to restrict their money supply...
... that we'll be able to search all windows users hard drives now, and not even need a P2P client, just use MS search? It's a feature!
Seriously, bring it on, the quicker tens of millions of windows users get completely and totally compromised, even more than they are now, the faster we can get them off the internet.
MS just plain don't get it, complete total lack of sanity at the top levels there, the stuff they release comes pre broken and there's no fixing it, it is not suitable for open networking, it is only barely suitable for closed intranets with an airgap between that and the internet. Windows doesn't make society money, it costs society money. It costs home users cash and aggravation, it costs business money and aggravation, it compromises millions personal online security, and it is threatening national security. Enough's enough, they fail it!
How long have they been trying to patch and release anything even medium secure and functional? Years and years. Have they come close to suceeding yet? HECK NO!
So this new whizzbang shiny integrated search is going to be anything different? NOPE, it's going to be as buggy and insecure as everything else they have ever released, because windows is broken for being online with, it was designed broken from day one, it can not be patched into acceptability, and introducing new features means introducing new vulnerabilities and instabilities. THEY FAIL IT!
MS is going to slide down hill just like AOL is, OK for back then, but not today, and definetly not for the future, no matter what they do. they have zero idea of how to proceed, they are like an over the hill boxer, punch drunk, staggering, still on their feet but one fight too many. They should take their billions and retire, quit while they are still ahead and have some cash in the bank, just close up shop. Give it up MS, go home, the party is over..
I think anyone who pays >$100 per share for a peice of Google is nuts.
Depends how many shares there are. Most US shares are in the $10-$100. In the UK the FTSE shares typically are $1.50-$15 range. If google sold ONE share for $100 it'd be worth having. If they sold 1 billion shares for $100, it wouldnt.
isorox : "Depends how many shares there are"
Google is setting their market cap as high as a massive, totally unrealistic $36 billion!
That's about the same as yahoo, which has far more very profitable business in addition to just search that Google has, and Yahoo is not that far behind Google in search either.
Its simple: Buy Google at these prices, and lose your search! its the internet bubble of the late 90's all over again.
Millions lost fortunes, and like lemmings, they may very well lose their moneys again.
Poor guys!
*sigh*, militarily Iraq was in essence conquered and the the last few minor (on a large scale) pockets of resistance are being eliminated.
Nothing at all like the scale and scope of the loss and conflict in Vietnam.
Jeremy
that my post indicated that such a thing would be a good thing from google's perspective. I made no comment on whether or not it would be good for anybody else.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
and they know it, hence the IPO. Quality of searches is way down, outages due to viruses, stiff competition. polymorph
I'm surprised nobody mention this... but is this a well-timed pres release from Redmond, or what! I wonder what that will do to GOOG's IPO price. It's good to have competition.
Simpy
If you go to 'Search' in Windows, now you'll be able to search MSN as well as your hard drive? How is that new?
I normally use opera or firefox on my linux box. From time to time I use IE on my wifes computer to view ie only sites.. In opera you can just type "google" in and opera will fill in .com and take you there. if you just type "google" on IE, it searches msn for the word google. Happens to me every time. Dang memory... what were we talking about again?
People say my sig is the best thing about me.
This is not even the start of the war. This is just the first shots to be heared round the Google office building. Microsoft demons some pre-alfa ready tech right before Google's IPO. This is just an attempt to scare investors away from Google by pushing some vaporware in part of their 2006 operating system.
Things to understand:
1. Microsoft never fought a battle with superior technology. In there early days though fought with quick wits, gaslighting IBM with Dos which they bought and Basic something IBM could have done itself pretty quick and easy. Today they fight wars of attrition the have more cash then anyone else so the can just push crap but drownout their competetors with marketing muscule(linux) or undercut them even when their own costs are higher(Playstaion, GameCube).
2. M$ hands are basicly tied anytime they don't have an Office or OS release coming down the pike, these are really their ownly method to deliver new product and technology. Lets be honest most of their other attempts such as CRM and SharePointe are plugins for office. People coming to expect Windows and Office will do everything they need. No need to buy other software, well maybe games.
3. People are getting angry at the upgrade tredmill, they don't want a new OS every 18 months, they want upgrades and free crack, which they should get because M$ screwed it up the first time. Also generally the system requirements on a given OS level trageted at the average box at the time of its release so their old box has to go unless they really went high end or purchased it very recently.
4. M$ likes the upgrade tredmill it generates constant revenue and provides them oppertunity to push new products and capture new markets, see item 2. To address this they tried to do some really ambitous things with Blackcomb to get peoples interest back. Then they discovered they bit off more then they could chew scraped almost all if it for longhorn other then some DRM stuff noone really want. This forced them to give people a break and set the relase date at 05. Then they discovered XP was so back that they had lots of fix work before they could even attempt to sell the next product. Let me tell you Longhorn is nothing but XP with a different UI, at its core its still win2k. I have seen the beta. This has pushed them back to 2006.
5. Since their hands are tied for a year or more , and they like to fight by just having more money then anyone else, they have to do something to take the wind out of Google's sails. M$ anounced along time ago they mean to get the search market, their model demands they make good on their word. They will be fighting an entrened enemy Google is getting a year lead.
6. The last thing Bill can stand is a Google with $$ as it might mean they could lose for a change.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
If you're so confident sell short
Why does MS want this? I can make some guesses. For one thing, it fits in with their long-term marketing goal of "we don't sell software, we just rent it." If you can't tell the difference between your desktop and the net (and many of the more naive computer users are already there), then you won't mind so much if every time you crank up Word it's actually downloaded from a server. Another reason is that if the line between the Windows desktop and the world is blurred, then all the world looks like Windows.
Probably, it won't work this time--any more than "channels" worked in Windows 98 (or was that 95? Jeez--my memory is really going). But--and this is the scary part--it doesn't matter very much to Microsoft. They don't have to get it right the first time (and they never do). They don't even have to get it right the fifth time. Once Bill decides on an agenda, he keeps right on pushing it until eventually the bloated bureaucracy known as Microsoft happens to produce something that does work. That's the advantage of having a de facto monopoly.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I work mostly as a contractor on projects for Microsoft on Microsoft dev platforms. To find documentation on various MS widgets, I type the name of the object/method/whatever into Google and it returns a wealth of useful references. A lot of these point to MSDN, but MSDN's own search engine returns a load of useless irrelevant crap. Ballmer will have to do a lot more than make a speech to convince me that Microsoft has figured out how to write a decent search engine.
"For example, updating the index when a file changes would be easiest if you can get notifications from the base level."
Which is why Windows has this as a documented API call.
So they're going to try to compete with google by bundling the search engine with their ubiquitous desktop. Hard drive search engine a couple hundred grand. Potentially stoping 90+ percent of people from ever even considering another search engine ..... priceless.
Microsoft has enough programmers to program what it wants. (a less stable version however)
and if they can't program it, they can just buy it
/. is a website with a lot of quantity......
The RHS? No comment.
I know as well as you know that everyting that crosses in front of Microsoft's field of global domination is a threat to them. Browesers, OS, Applications. The only thing I fear is one day waking up to live in a Microsoft Enforced World. Where they have everything and worst we are forced to use it. Apple does this with their users, but they are crunching and building for them, they are not trying too hard to convince the world to change to apple, yeah they do it in marketing and switch ads, but you don't see jobs shoving competition into everything they land their eyes on.
What I can only think that could put this in worst is if Google decides to launch an IM of their own. That would complete the set of wars we are going to live through:
1. The new browser war IE vs Firefox
2. Longhorn vs OSX
3. Hotmail, Yahoo vs Google
4. Xbox vs PS3 vs Nintendo Gcube 2005
5. Msn Messenger vs yahoo vs aim vs trillian?
My generation survived the Netscape war, and though this kind of competitions bring better innovations it does get a bit tiresome... Microsoft should keep the seat they have in the desktop market and let other companies compete in other arenas instead of trying to own it all.
The most interesting of these wars in my opinion will be the Console war, frankly aside from it all I think Microsoft will win it because of Xbox Live!
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DUFFMAN OHYEAH
The potentially biggest problems is that whether its better or not, if Micorsoft's search tools are defaulted and integrated into the OS, then folks will use that more than anything else.
But is this really a problem? If it is as good as Google, then why shouldn't people use it?
I don't think the problem is with results or effeciency. The real potential problem is Microsoft totally driving out the competition, and becoming even more monopolistic. Again, not such a bad thing for 'users' but the side effects of a total monopoly in software aren't yet fully realized.
I'm still struggling to get my wife to use Firefox over Internet Explorer, old habits die hard.
Anyway, lets bide our time, use our favorites and see how it falls out.
Tojo
I'll match your don't forget that until and raise it by one older one. Don't forget: when Yahoo first started, their search engine was based upon people manually walking the web and keying references to things they found interesting (as well as things people sent to them).
Never underestimate Micro$oft's ability to leverage their competition.
Indicate you're looking at Linux?
Be prepared for some very sweet deals - sell your souls...this time
Defy them (fail to re-up)?
Prepare for a license audit at 0-dark-hundred.[1]
Ahead of them in the marketplace?
Be prepared.
Feel their breath on your neck?
Here it comes
They'll offer^w send Guido to the more important or most crucial lynchpins and make them an offer they cannot refuse. Little by little, they maintain, then grow their marketshare not by outperforming their competitors but by sabotaging them - cut off vital resources - in this case, information. No info, no service.
There is no question that it was more functional and stable than IE4.
I would question that assertion.
As for functionality, IE4 introduced the modern DOM and added the native COM integration.
IE4 was definitely more stable than Navigator 4. Whatever problems you had with IE4, I'm sure you're talking about the Platform Preview releases. Navigator 4 crashes are what drove me to IE, and I've never looked back.
Remember Netscape layers? Me neither. The IE4 CSS and DOM support made them virtually obsolete.
Netscape may have survived if they had released Navigator 5 instead of stubbornly waiting for the gecko engine to be completed. They allowed MS to take the market with its superior browser. MS would not have even needed to release IE5 (which was mostly CSS2 and better international support.)
I also replace the default IE homepage with http://news.google.com.au/ (guess which country I live in) on any new MS-Windows install. The bandwidth is lower, the news more useful and there are more tools one click away.
Does Yahoo translate? I use Google links on my corporate pages to do that. Do they offer a calculator or conversions? All of the stuff in the "missing Google manual"? As a search engine, Yahoo isn't in the same class.
As to Yahoo's photo galleries, they have some fairly severe limits. On the other hand, a Google search for a stock ticker will take you to Yahoo's finance pages. Each has something to offer, so I'm glad they both exist.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
ad.law3.hotmail.com
http://ad.law3.hotmail.com was running Apache on FreeBSD when last queried at 26-Jul-2004
Also in a paper by Microsoft it clearly shows how Microsoft transferred the Hotmail site (that is the front-end servers!) from FreeBSD to Win2K (after years of failing to convert them to WinNT), but no mention about the back-end, no mention about the database, no mention about where all those mails are stored and sent from!
Unless someone from Microsoft officially states, that "no Unix-like OS is used anywhere at Hotmail", I will continue to claim Hotmail is still running FreeBSD, and I am able to prove it (thanks to Netcraft)!
In IE, type google and then hit Ctrl+Enter and it will send you to http://www.google.com
I really miss being able to do that when I use Mozilla, Firefox, or Opera. Keywords is not quite the same fuctionality.
As another has poined out, Sherlock was here first, and a long time ago at that. But Google is so good that a multi-search engine approach is less important now on the web side.
Instead of having a Google search of one's email on a remote server, I'd much rather have that capability locally. Someone (Jobs?) has observed that it is easier to find things on the web than on one's own hard drive. We can try for logical organizations of our files in folders and with mnemonic file names, but eventually many users will need something more powerful like a library card catalog. Essentially this is a collection of metadata describing the literature, in addition to hierarchical organization. Imagine being to have a single file appear in many different folders (catagories). The Mac is out ahead on this but still hasn't gotten there. Perhaps Spotlight will take a big step in this direction?
ThosEM