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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.
"
Google is now too deeply embedded into most web users vocabulary to be knocked off the #1 spot. A little bit like M$ on the desktop of your average Joe. In the former case an excellent situation, in the latter, a very sad state of affairs. Swings and roudabouts I suppose.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Search engines are ubiquitous now. Google pretty much owns this domain. Not only that, they are well respected by everyone. Microsoft is not respected by many people. There's no need to switch. There is no value added benefit for someone to switch or use Microsoft's new search.
It's already getting either googlewhacked or biased from the inside. Just look at the top two results for searching "More evil than god" (no quotes)
The difference is that the defalts "Safesearch" settings are set to "Moderate - Filter sexually explicit images only">. I changed it to "Strict - Filter sexually explicit text and image results">, I got this message for xfree86
The search xfree86 may return sexually explicit content.
We didn't return results because your SafeSearch setting is set to Strict. To get results using the current search, change your SafeSearch setting.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Here is something strange: Search for Tolkien (a search that is close to my heart).
Why is this result coming up as second?
I can't figure that one out, any ideas. Other than Its Broke
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
I've got a picture of the more evil than satan search as well as a more comprehensive critique of the site which asks the question does Microsoft manipulate your search results at: http:// Is_Microsoft_Manipulating_the_Search_Results_with_ Their_New_MSN_Search_for_Their_Own_Agenda?
There's a small review at The Register. His impression is better query features, bad results.
But much more interesting is his commentary on what all search engines are missing. Most of the "data" people want to find isn't on any computer network. It's in our social network, our minds. So how do we get the technology to adapt to society? Or do we force society to adapt to the technology.
The "search engine wars" might be a little interesting. But are they missing the big picture? From a non-technical person's perspective they might be.
Developers: We can use your help.
First stop when searching is Google. But when I appear to have stumped Google I go over to Jeeves.
Ask Jeeves is interesting because unlike other search engines which work by assuming you at least have a hunch on what you need, AJ doesn't. The BBC's example is perfect: Searching for "raleigh" could mean the famous historical figure, multiple cities around the world, different buisness and brands, etc. Google is inclined to dump them all onto you and make you sort it out. If Google presents what you need on the first page it might be more by popularity or luck but AJ shows you a bunch of fast ways to filter out results from the huge disparaging set of matches.
This is a feature I wish Google had. If I get too many matches that appear to not be what I'm looking for I rephrase the querry which AJ does on the fly with these filters.
Maybe Google's the search King in terms of Volume, but the quality of the results is turning to shit real fast.
I find much better results with alltheweb now than Google.
Google needs to find a way to filter out shit content - content that just takes usenet stuff and posts as html; content that just is a set of hyperlinks to other content and has nothing else to contribute.
Right now, it's hard to find relevant web content through google because of google-spammers. If google isn't careful, people will start switching away from it, as easily as people switched to it.
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It would certainly be worse if Microsoft held the 90% marketshare currently held by Google. I certainly don't want that. Here is what I'm hoping:
- MSN improves and captures about 20% of search
- Yahoo improves and captures about 20% of search
- Overture improves and captures about 20% of search
- Other competitors capture a combined 20% of search
- Google retains the remaining 20% of search
With everything on that list plus or minus ten percent.Having one company dominate search is bad for several reasons:
- They have censorship power
- They have unprecedented power to track users and gather data on them
- It is a single point of failure for a needed service on the internet
- Potention to become a monopoly that is able to squeeze the profit margins from small businesses that rely on traffic from search engines
In general it is good for consumers of all sorts to have choice. Especially when all the choices are good.There a bunch of signs that Google's deathgrip on search is slipping:
Try this for size... Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com) and enter "beta.search.msn.com"
When I worked for IBM (namedrop) in 95-96, I stood up at a conference and said to the CEO in front of 1000 dyed-in-the-wool delegates "There is a buzz about Windows, and ALL the students are using it. Today's students are tomorrow's CIOs, engineers and buyers. What is the board going to do to recapture that buzz for OS2*". To IBM's credit I wasn't fired on the spot, but there again, the answer was the usual deadwood remarks about "market need blah datacenter blergh blah".
IBM then went into a dark period with OS2, OS400, MVS, TSO, JSL, CICS, MQ, DB2, Websphere, PC, AIX etc etc etc. They became all things to all people and had an application to do anything you wanted. The sales guys treated the customers like cash cows and leveraged the datacenter iron like crazy. Customers hated it and you physically could see the pleasure on their faces when UNIX and PCs arrived so they could stick one on IBM.
Sound familiar?
Today there is a buzz about OSS that MS can only dream about. But more to the point, MS are falling into the same trap as IBM. They are trying to diversify into areas best left alone for example Handsets and Search Engines. They do both badly, they leverage their installed base like crazy and the sales guys treat their customers like cash cows (coincidence? not really. There is every chance it's the same sales guys).
The reason such mega-companies act like spoilt two-year olds is a result of how capitalism works. Investors always want growth. It is unacceptable to stand in front of the AGM and say: "We made 100 gazillion again last year. Same as the year before and the year before that". So if you already own 98% of the PCs then you can't go up - you have to go sideways into new revenue earners, eg search engines. And you will never, EVER be as good at that because its a market or a technology or a customer or a partner or a culture you do not understand. Mistakes are made. Things go wrong. People get sued. Then you start to die. Its a bit like bacteria in a flask. Ironically anyone with a pension scheme will have some money invested however indirectly in this process. I smile every day knowing I am doing my bit to eat away Microsoft from the inside just as my serial installations of Linux of friends systems eats them from without.
I digress.
Add to this death spiral Bill's insane need to WIN AT ALL COSTS and you have the recipe for a firm that is at odds with itself: It has to grow but can only do so by changing but it can't change because it always has to be RIGHT. When it is more important to be RIGHT than to be ACCEPTABLE then it's only a matter of time until you have no customers.
*I didnt come across Linux until a month or two later after which I became a Linux advocate.
Try Clusty for clustered searching. I am starting to use it more often than google.
Everyone knows about the old put: "answer to life the universe and everything" into Google and get 42 in Google calculator, as seen here.
Well the new MSN search has the _exact_ same thing shown here.
In my opinion, that's a pathetic rip off of a good Google joke. Micrsoft doesn't have a true sense of humor (or at least I've never seen evidence of it), but Google definitely does, A la the famous Google Moon Base april fools joke etc. All MSN search can hope to be is a glossed over clone of Google, they've been their first, they've found all the cool stuff.
But hey, that's just my 2 cents (including GST)
Sleep, she is for the weak..
The reason nobody can win against Google is that Googles results are almost as good as they can be. That's why it only took me a couple of test searches to switch to Google. (Can you remember the time before Google? I *think* I was using Altavista, but it's all a blur of vague memories of never finding anything, so I'm not sure...)
They only time Google doesn't come up with relevant search results is when I'm forced to use so generic words that I get a wide spread of hits. No traditional keyword based search engine can beat that.
The next search engine people will switch to is the one that can help you focus in on a more specific topic or type of information, without using specific keywords and without using keyword searching. I have seen some experimental search engines that will group pages depending on what they are about and then let you do subsearches withing a selected group. This technology is still too raw to be useful, and it is still based on keywords in the pages and links, but someday somebody will have an idea as bright as Google, adn searching will leap to the next level.
I'm not betting on that it will be Microsoft. Actually, the company most likely to do such a thing is Google themselves. They still haven't lost the inventive touch, as Gmails user interface shows.
In fact, Mossberg's full article came complete with its own "bottom line": "The bottom line: Google is still my search service of choice, but Microsoft has arrived in search and will be a more and more attractive alternative."
I have to ask, Why are we not rejoicing? We now have two competitors trying to add more useful features. They are already driving innovation -- to the benefit of us. And, so long as Google exists, MSN must do no evil, else it will never gain customers.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
In the Seattle PI blog page linked in the post, the Microsoft marketing team has done their part:
As expected, the world's greatest development team (Microsoft) have rewritten the search engine rules. The new MSN search blows EVERYTHING else out of the water, it's simply incredible. Google should be very worried. The "search builder" is a phenomenal development (hats off to MS research labs), no other search engine comes close. I was amazed at the accuracy of the "near me" feature - it correctly located a store just 25 miles from my house! I won't be going back to Google, I advise you to do the same. Search with the best, search with Microsoft Search.
Posted by: David Cross at November 12, 2004 08:43 AM
Blatant, much?
Try "search engine" (both with and w/o quotes). Dunno about you guys, but I couldn't find any search engine I know of in the first five pages (I didn't look any further). Ironically, the same search on Google (with quotes) lists Altavista, Lycos, AlltheWeb, Excite and Yahoo on the first page...
So we can assume popularity does not come into the ranking.
lol true enough....
/.'s method of moderating content up and down. I think it would benefit the web greatly. Someone searches for Canon EOS reviews for example, and the modded up results get to the top of the list.
It's sad that google-spamming has become a busienss model. It doesn't cost too much to copy usenet content and post it on a site, and watch the search results come rolling in.
I actually like
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