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MSN Search Roundup
Thomas Hawk writes "Well after almost 24 hours of public release, The Seattle Post Intelligencer seems to have the best round up on the professional opinions on the new MSN search beta. Bottom line seems to be that nobody is going to be switching over to MSN Search from Google anytime soon. The story includes opinions by
Walter Mossberg,
John Battelle,
The Wall Street Journal and others.
"
it has bugs, it is not ready, all that jazz, did I mention it was beta?
did you forget to take your meds?
... nobody is going to be switching over to MSN Search from Google anytime soon.
Not until the next Service Packs make it the default search engine, anyway.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Noone needs to switch from Google. They just have to keep people from switching to Google.
MSN is the default homepage for a gajillion browsers out there. It just has to be good enough to keep them from looking for something different.
Besides, it's still a beta, and TFA says they won't replace much of the core searching until 2005.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Bottom line seems to be that nobody is going to be switching over to MSN Search from Google anytime soon.
The bottom line is not quite so overcast as this statement seems to imply. None were negative, but most mentioned that this is beta quality and had the potential to tackle google in the future.
Every search engine--not web portal--I can remember consisted of a search field surrounded by a couple of options. Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, Google. There's not much difference between any of them. What about the UI exactly do you mean?
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
All you have to do is integrate it into the operating system and poof google goes away!
Got Code?
They will switch because some future version of IE will have a search bar that goes there, and most users will use whatever is provided for them. Sorry, but that is just the way it goes. The monopoly is simply too strong and the legal system is not fast enough or willing to actually punish them in a meaningful way.
Kind of like Netscape?
Yeah. Google will float on top until someone better comes along, or Marketing brings it down.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
While I disagree that Microsoft is a very litigous company (they mostly go after pirates, which I think is a legitimate grievance), I think you might have missed the obvious:
Microsoft does not innovate. It copies, assimilates, and polishes. Microsoft software is never groundbreaking in any significant way - it just is usually more usable, better integrated, more reputable, and cheaper than the competition. Of course, once they have eliminated the competition, they no longer have anyone to copy.
Jeez, do I really have to explain monopoly expansion via bundling for umpteenth time on Slashdot? OK, here it is short and sweet. If someone has a monopoly, their customers have no other practical choice than to use their product. If that monopoly then enters another market, and bundles their two products, there is no way any competitor can survive, even with a better product. If you follow this to it's end conclusion, you end up with one company that sells everything. This is why we have a regulated capitalist system. Because monopolies are bad for everyone except the monopolist.
Microsoft has already set back the computing industry by a decade. Think of all the great companies they bought and killed, or squashed with bundling. When MS incorporates a search engine into their browser, all the cool stuff google (and everyone else in the search space) would otherwise bring us will not happen.
What do they have?
Froogle, copy of JungleE
news, standard search on a subset of sites
groups, dejanews, bought in a firesale
toolbar, just another spyware toolbar
cache, less useful Internet Archive
gmail, it is just e-mail, that goes down at least as much for me as hotmail ever did.
The truth is, for all their thousands of millionaire PhD's they haven't done very much truely innovative. The other thing that is scary for google stockholders is that Microsoft only spent $100 million, to be almost google, what do you think they could do for a $billion?