Microsoft To Launch Homegrown Search Engine

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "While Google is currently the king-of-the-hill in search engines, Microsoft continues to lag in market share and uses Yahoo's technology/results. But Cnet reports that they'll launch on Thursday their own homegrown search engine , although it appears this is mostly a face-lift (despite a year of development and $100 million investment). According to Bill Gates, they 'will introduce a homegrown web crawler and algorithmic search engine ... later this year,' which is almost certainly their tech preview (you can look at this now) -- but will that be ready for prime-time in less than two months?"

Comments

Re:So

[MoonFog]

Since it'll probably end up being default start-up page in IE, lots.

Microsoft's problem

[ArbiterOne]

Microsoft is branching out too much. Without ripping off Google, I don't really see how they can pull this off. In order to reverse the current trend in market share, they'd have to have a better algorithm than Google, a massive ad campaign, and the popular opinion on their side. Oh, and start giving things away for free (Google: Blogger, Picasa, etc.)

Re:Microsoft's problem

[KiloByte]

... or ignore quality and just put it as the default (and only) search engine for a certain well-known OS...

Re:Microsoft's problem

[geg81]

It's not a "rip off" when multiple companies offer similar products, it is competition. Competition is a good thing: it lowers prices and improves products. And while Google has some good technology, they company didn't come into being in a vacuum and they don't own the idea of citation and reference analysis, either legally or scientifically.

"Lower what prices?" you might ask. Well, Google isn't a charity. I expect Microsoft will compete with them on advertising rates and whereever else Google makes money.

The only thing that may be considered unfair about that is that Microsoft can afford to make losses for many years on this before driving Google out of business. But that's a problem everybody faces when Microsoft enters a new market.

Re:Microsoft's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer to the question "how does Microsoft intend to destroy Goggle" has been well known for a while. They will use the same old anti competitive tactic they used for Netscape and imbed the search capability direct into Windows probably via Windows Explorer. By upping the convenience, they think, the fact that the search is inferior probably doesn't matter much. It worked very well for IE, Office and the Windows platform itself. It hasn't worked so well for them recently with neither the Xbox or .NET or whatever their iPod killer is called all looking rather lame. I don't think it will work here eihter. After all you already can search MSN from Windows Explorer and nobody bothers on account of the fact that the search results are so useless.

The weird thing about all of this, at least to me, is that MS had a really good opportunity to get Windows into the data centre between about 1999-2002 when Linux wasn't quite there and customers were looking for a cheaper alternative than Solaris/AIX etc. They missed it because they were so busy trying to be Sony and Sun and are now compounding the problem trying to be Google. In the mean time Linux has plugged the hole and is firmly established as the low cost data centre OS of choice.

The browser war was won when Microsoft removed any value from PC based browsers (you couldn't sell them anymore since MS gave their one away for free) - but that means that you end up with something that costs you money to maintain and support for no good reason, so you don't bother, and end up with something that looks as tiered as Internet Explorer (or a very tired thing, make up your own simile). Whilst I'm sure they could make a lot of money selling advertising space on Windows (the base Goggle profit stream) I can't help feeling that customers might not like it very much. And, of course, you don't need an expensive search engine R&D project to do this, you could just say randomly change everybody's wallpaper to an advert every 5 minutes or something.

Re:Microsoft's problem

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Let us not forget that Google is foraying into Microsoft's domain.

Gmail and Google Desktop Search are not accidents. Hotmail is extremely popular, and with Google Desktop Search, Google has learned that people will install replacements to Microsoft's own built-in services if they are better, and if they are branded.

And the browser war was never won. That was just the browser battle. By removing value from browsers, all Microsoft did was reduce the incentive for it to update its own browser after it gained near-ubiquity. Open-source has no problem with zero value, and this is why Mozilla has no problems working tirelessly on Firefox and Seamonkey. The browser war has just begun.

Re:Microsoft's problem

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Yeah! And whats with AOL using AIM as the default messaging service? And aol's mail for the default email? Its so monopolistic! They should license YIM and embed it into aol to be fair to their competition.

Seriously, its their browser, why shouldnt they make the homepage their search? Moz's default is a moz branded google, how is this different?

Re:Microsoft's problem

[jsebrech]

Microsoft may have won the browser war against netscape, but netscape lost it. Had netscape not put out such crappy products in the 4.x timeframe, they wouldn't have dropped below the 20 percent marketshare treshold, and people would have designed sites to work in both.

For microsoft to win the search engine war, google would have to lose it, and that's not very likely.

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[account_deleted]

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One word why Microsoft will fail

[Anonymous Coward]

censorship

lack of trust

[vinsci]

Microsofts search engine lacks the most important feature: trusted results.

In the past, it has been shown that Microsoft blocks search results that are contrary to its own business interests.

W3C page for HTML nowhere in the first 20 results

[northcat]

I searched for 'html' in their "preview" search engine and the w3c page for HTML was nowhere in the first 20 results. I didn't look beyond 20 results. The w3c page should have been in at least the first 20 results. Is this search engine really that good?

If their past strategy is any guide...

[DonDiablo]

... after getting enough users from directing all windows searches to their engine, they will create "search extensions" for all the sites hosted in a Microsoft server, and "special html/jsp search tags" for sites developed using their tools, which will produce a better placement on their search results.

Looks just like google

[ChrisMDP]

Sadly, Microsoft are up to their old tricks again...

1. Release a sub-standard product which looks like the better original.
2. Rely on their massive brand penetration to increase market share.
3. Throw enough cash at something to make it worthwhile.

It irritates me that they do this - it slows the rate of internet progress down by duplicating other peoples ideas. Why not invest in google and build on what someone else has done, rather than trying to completely monopolise all areas of the internet?

This isn't insightful

[SimianOverlord]

Google have built up a market by offering ad views alongside their search engine, thus making money. It isn't about the search, it's about that market, and Microsoft moving into new markets is what it is all about.

They do not need a better algorithm than Google (which is becoming increasingly gamed by shady companies and not as good as it was anyway), they just need something "good enough", like their OS is "good enough".

As for reversing the trend, Microsoft have 1) leverage in the form of their existing OS userbase (as others have mentioned, using MS search as default), 2) Massive cash surplus 3)Brand recognition. They do not have to give things away for free. They have to fight against a competitor with a larger market share, something they have done in the past quite successfully. Do not confuse the Slashdot echochamber with objective reality.

Re:About time

[AndroidCat]

Blocked it with what? Is it playing nice with robots.txt and meta-tags, or did you have to get rough?

Nice and clean

[jmcmunn]

I can't say that this will be my first stop when searching (Google will be until they stop being the best) but often times, if my result is not in the first few pages of Google, rather than figure out the exact phrase I need to search for to find the site I am looking for, I just hit a few other engines to see if my original phrase does the trick.

I can see how this new MS search page would become stop number 2, in front of Yahoo as long as they keep it clean and light like Google is. Then I'll move along to Yahoo of Lycos or wherever.

So yeah, I think this is a good improvement for my general searching needs, but it is going to take something amazing to replace Google as my number one choice. It's sort of a brand loyalty at this point.

Re:3 bad results.

[caluml]

I ran those 3 searches a minute before I posted them. If they used to be true, they still are. I am in the UK. Maybe it's messed up over here?

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