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)."

Comments

Re:Yahoo matches Google?

[gotr00t]

Don't forget that Yahoo offers more than search, while google is really still just a search engine, with the possible exception of Gmail, which has not been made avaliable to the general public.

Then again, "market share" is a very vague term, and I take it to mean the overall market share of these webportals.

and in other google news...

[SuperBanana]

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.

The suit said SmartForce officers and directors, including Drummond, ''acted knowingly or in such a reckless manner as to constitute a fraud and deceit" upon shareholders. Drummond, as chief financial officer, had been responsible for SmartForce's financial reports.

Meet the new boss- same as the old boss.

Market Share - Hogwash

[stevenmusumeche]

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.

Re:Yahoo matches Google?

[prostoalex]

Yahoo has far more reaching international appeal. While Google runs international Web front-ends in chosen language, portals like Yahoo! Singapore are separate business operations with their own marketing, sales and so on. Pretty big brand name in Asia, from what I've heard.

Am I the only one who thinks google sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks google sucks?

[presarioD]

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

You know there is this thing called BOOLEAN operator that you can use to eliminate search results pretty quickly. If all you type is

DVD model #

well good luck!

But if you type

+"DVD model #" +put_manufacture_company_here -buy

as an example on top of my head you pretty much calibrate the search to what you want.

Then again you posted this anonymously so you probably do not care for the solution...

Re:Objetivity

[proj_2501]

top 5 results for 'linux' search
on google:
1.) linux.org
2.) linux.com
3.) redhat.com
4.) debian.org
5.) kernel.org
on msn:
1.) linux.org
2.) linux.com
3.) redhat.com
4.) kernel.org
5.) debian.org

msn even links to google's specialized linux search later on.

Hmm, this looks

[sabNetwork]

familiar.

No one can blame Apple for being a little prophetic.

--

Obvious Simpsons reference

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Search.yahoo.com

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Objetivity

[Otter]

I think what he's thinking of was a preview of the new MSN search engine that was linked here a while ago, that seemed to weight domain names containing "linux" much higher than Google does, so that redhat.com placed below, say, linuxtoday.com. That sent the tinfoil hat crowd into a frenzy, although I'm not quite sure why.

What's live at MSN now is clearly a different ranking method than that one.

correction

[SuperBanana]

CFO of google

Oops, had that wrong. Drummond is "vice president for corporate development, secretary, and general counsel" for Google.

Re:Others than Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't, now that you posted in it.

Re:question

[Xeth]

Because the current owners are keeping enough stock to make sure that's impossible. Perhaps for just such a reason.

Re:MSN percentages

[MS]

They counted "users", not "usage"!!!

An example why this makes such a big difference:

• I use Google 10 times a day, MSN and Yahoo only once a day.
• My wife uses Google 2 times a day
• My brother uses Altavista (now Yahoo) once a day

This gets counted as: 3 users, of which 66% use Google, 66% use Yahoo and 33% use MSN.

But usage numbers are quite different: out of 15 searches, 12 are made through Google (80%), 2 by Yahoo!(13%) and one by MSN (7%).

So, while there may seem equally many users of Google, Yahoo and MSN, the real usage if heavily pro Google.

ms

Re:Scortched earth policy

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

Google invented the search engine?

Search engine stats for my sites

[theluckyleper]

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!

Re:Google might be toast.

[catch23]

31 percent means almost 1 out of 3 people use MSN for their daily searches. If you went out in public and asked that question, I don't think you would get 1 out of 3 people. I'm pretty sure those numbers are highly inflated. My mom doesn't even use msn. It comes up on the front page, but then she just goes to google.

Re:Oops, there's a typo.

[multimed]

Ok thought I posted a reply to this but must've gotten lost in the ether. My interest was piqued by your endorsement of Picasa so I gave it a try. Installed it, tried it & thought it was quite cool. But when I logged in as user instead of admin it won't work. Checked out their support FAQ and sure enough, "To use Picasa in Windows XP, the user must be signed on as an Administrator."

What's up with that crap? I use my admin user for admin things like installing hardware & software. My family uses the limited user accounts for everything else--for plenty of reasons. Playing with photo software no matter how cool is not going to work if we have to switch to the admin account every time.