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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.
"
What is he talking about? Microsoft hasn't been a feisty upstart since about 1986.
12:50 - press return.
What gets me is the blatant rip off of Google's UI. This coming from Microsoft - the trademark happy lawsuit company.
Test driving 5 search engines
BBC conclusion is that Google is still the search king, but others (Yahoo, Ask Jeeves) also offer interesting search results.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Bill Gates: We will reinvent the wheel. Let's make it rounder.
Everyone Else: Google is works, without any extra crap, and that's why we like it.
Bill Gates: Use our new rounder search engine! It is powered by Yahoo, until 2005! Plus we have added lots of special crap! (mostly because so many people asked for it!)
Everyone Else: Don't you ever learn? We said we didn't want anything but a simple, accurate search engine. We have that already. Do something else.
Bill Gates: But the first 50-100 results now show the websites that have *paid* to be listed! How can you beat that? If they are going to fork over this extra cash to be listed, they must have really quality websites, right?!
Everyone Else: Yeah, that makes total sense to us.
Bill Gates: Plus Google doesn't have neato browser interstitials! They are lacking in the creative marketing department! Seriously!!
Everyone Else: What excites you, does not excite us.
Bill Gates: Our search is easier to get to because a link comes with every copy of XP! You know how hard it is to put a link on the desktop or in the Start Menu? We should be given the Nobel Peace Prize, or something.
Everyone Else: I think we want a search engine that filters out any website or company affiliated with Microsoft.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Options page is even more googlish
Unfortunately, too few pages are indicized. My site is used to be in the first page of relevant searches in most search engines, but in msn it does not wshow at all :(
M.
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.
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)
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.
search for
"more evil than satan"
on
http://beta.search.msn.com/
generic
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
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.
Or did you not get that memo? :)
it will cost you a cookie but Webb's Filter is good at rounding up media reactions: /. story on Mozilla.org pondering addition of search tools to its arsenal should be considered in light of [and sheds a different light on ] development of Microsoft's plans.
In her usual thorough fashion Cynthia Webb of the Washington Post has summarized the punditry concerning the impact Microsoft's pending search service will have on Google's business . Most of the analysis says MS has a weak product and miles to go to overtake Google...but thats the position they were in vs Netscape once upon a time. The
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
It looks like you're searching for porn. Would you like help?
*blink* *blink*
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.
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."
MSN is a moderate rip-off of Googles UI. If you want a blatant rip off of Google's UI, its at http://search.yahoo.com/
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
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.
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.
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?