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MSN Search Has Arrived
strikehosting writes "The new MSN Search, "the first-ever search engine built from the ground up by Microsoft", has been launched worldwide. It will be available in 25 markets and 10 languages.
A few features though, like MSN Music and 'Search Near Me', are available only in the United States.
Sporting a cleaner look and a simplified layout, MSN Search has a more prominent position on the home page. The features that are available here include tabs that allow consumers to target searches to the Web, news, images, music, desktop or Microsoft Encarta."
Microsoft still hopes that people will buy the Encarta software for additional tools not included in the search engine, such as a guide that helps children finish their homework. The Encarta features will make a huge difference in setting MSN Search apart from rivals, said Charlene Li, an analyst tracking the search industry for Forrester. "Here is this objective, fact-based information that you need," she said. "It's really hard to find that objective point of view" online.
For one, the use of the online Encarta isn't completely free. If you make an Encarta search, you'll notice a clock ticking in the left side of the screen: you only have two hours of "free" Encarta (remember, kids, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, especially coming from Microsoft). It seems that it won't stay free for long.
So, here's the dilemma: should one use non-free but objective Encarta or free but biased Wikipedia?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
See Google, you can take stuff out of beta!
For the few searches I've used MSN for, it seems to have better results than Google.
Anyone else noticing this?
Can't see what this would possibly give over Google or other great search engines. What possible benefit could Microsoft give to this that is not already there? Why bother reinventing the wheel, except for the purpose of desktop domination?
First post?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Mod me down as far as you like, but I'm liking what I've seen so far. Microsoft have at least so far, providied us with a largly clean, working search engine as a rival to Google and a lesser extent Yahoo. Competition is good; they should be applauded.
msn search: "bill gates sucks" - 608 matches
google: "bill gates sucks" - 2,460 matches
Not really shocking, I guess.
I keep hearing stories about how they've finally launched their search engine. What does this mean exactly? More specifically, why is it that the search results on:
my.msn.com
Differ from the results on:
search.msn.com
Seems like a really inconsistent launch.
I'm a big tall mofo.
It seams like it can
They just don't get it. The reason people use Google is because it loads fast and just works. It doesn't take forever to load with flash animations, and other crap no one needs. When you want to search you go to Google. If you want to be bombarded with media and advertisements there are plenty of other sites on the internet.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
I know people keep posting stuff along the lines of "oh deary me... this might kill Google", but no. It doesn't have to. MSN Search may take market share away from Google, but the people using it will be the ones who haven't figured out how to change the default search in IE, or set the homepage to something other than MSN. So, Google will hopefully become a search engine for the clueful, whilst the AOLers and WebTV people use MSN search.
Too much on the page that I don't care about. They're trying to sell their image and them trying to be flashy gets in the way. Now, I don't really like google; mainly because people use it as a verb, but at least they're not trying to cram 50 ads down my throat everytime I load the page. I don't think Microsoft will ever learn...
-SaNo
The first result for "linux" is an actual page devoted to Linux this time.
That's progress, right?
I can already hear it...
"Your Google results are just a myth."
Ugh, what a horrible mess of a page. Give me the clean lines of google anyday. I don't want or need all of that junk.
I'm located in Brussels/Belgium, don't know if it's belgium-related but how can you trust something --officially launched by Bill himself (note he's in Belgium today) -- that displays "http://beta.search.msn.be/..." when searching something ?
...
This doesn't look professional
Three Borg stories in a row? Has Slashdot been assimilated?
Flee! Flee for your life! (Unless they're brought Jeri Ryan with them.)
That's the third Bill of Borg in a row, the site is being assimilated!
msnbot.msn.com hit my web site no less than 10,661 times last month so I'll be interested to see what difference this has on my vistor numbers.
When Google launched I saw my hits go up quite considerably in the space of 6 months.
The main MSN page comes up, but the search result times out..
'beta.search.sympatico.msn.ca' times out haha
Oh wait, there it goes. 5th time trying it.
So, what's the MS marketing spin that says their search is better than Google? What's Bill's reason for me to switch?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Three MS stories in a row.
Wow, for a supposedly Linux-centric site to pay so much attention to Microsoft, you should just start a microsoft section.
If only you guys paid so much attention to Linux as you do Microsoft, maybe you guys would be past a 2% market share by now.
Why doesn't this correct my spelling?
I need to look for a specific word, but I have no idea how to spell it properly.
How can I find what I'm looking for if I don't know how it's spelt?
I'll stick with Google, thanks all the same.
Summation 2
I put porn in and the third result was about Lexmark, now I don't see how Lexmark's hardware relates to the pornographic industry, but hey, microsoft say so so it must be right :)
We had to modify our sites to remove session IDs when MSNBot comes by to cut the traffic.
I have noticed over the last few months that the MSN Bot has been a far more frequent crawler around my site than the Google Bot which was previously far and away the most active crawler which visited me.
Anyway for various phrases my site comes out in the number one position whereas on Google it's somewhere down in 10th place. To be fair though I am not sure my site is the best resource for these particular phrases.
It's certainly fast as well.
I still will be setting the home-page setting of all my users to www.google.com
On a 56K connection Microsoft's effort is still slow and clunky.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
My web browser just blocked a pop-up (by the way it s not the adware on my computer since I use Linux)
Nice... if this is how they want to entice more customers... I don't see Google dethroned anytime soon.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
a search for the exact string "linux is better than windows" yeilds:
1-10 of 1,686 containing "linux is better than windows" (0.30 seconds)
on msn. on google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 795 for "linux is better than windows". (0.34 seconds)
its only in beta though, so im sure theyll fix that soon.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
Google: "google is the best" : 15,700
Msn: "google is the best" : 5,484
I clicked on the picture of a smiling Mr Gates and he told me to "type in your question", so I was expecting an ask.com type search, but the results looked like any other search engine, and it did a very bad job of answering my question.
Also, the result page was in Dutch, because it noticed that I'm in Holland, but there was no obvious link to switch to English like Google has. Presumably Google knows I prefer English because of my browser settings.
Also, there appears to be an RSS feed, but it's not useful enough for Firefox to recognise it.
Who thinks that MSN search looks *just* like google, except blue-er, and doesn't work as well?
MSN Search results for "Microsoft is evil" : 2.66m
Google: 2.84m.
Not quite as obvious as other places, but the colour scheme....Google has blue text, with the link in green...MSN search has a slightly lighter shade of blue, with the links in the same colour of green. Also, most of the results on MSN search seem to be mainly selling things- Ebay is somehow listed on the front page - whereas google's are almost entirely relevant.
The wheel. Invented by Microsoft (Except now it's square).
My UID is prime. Is yours?
I notice this robot has index my site, even protected by a robots.txt file.
:D :grin:
What the world its come? arghh..
Fortunally enough my site its not compatible with IE
-Woof woof woof!
Well, searching for 'linux' only gives me Dutch pages. While I am Dutch, and on a Dutch network, if I do not check the 'search for pages in Dutch' box, shouldn't I get English pages?
This alone is reason enough not to use it in most cases.
But the look is clean enough, and it looks like no sponsored links on the "linux" keyword.
I just did a search for
:)
ShellExecute microsoft
and a number of variations, and on the MS search, I didn't get any MS sites in the top few entries.
the same search in google brings up the correct msdn documentation as #1
Still unsure of the quality of other searches, but competition is good
liqbase
MAC OS (Windows), Lotus 123(Excel), Corel WP(Word), Netscape(IE), Game Consoles(Xbox)... I heard MS is running a 4 month ad campaign for this new search engine. Do they have to own everything?!?
Come on guys. I know we're all rooting for Google in this fight, but childish tricks like that are just not cricket.
I've been using it all morning and it seems to me it's just as good, if not better than googles search. For one thing, many of the pages I'm looking for are about microsoft, such as security bulletins, windows media player download site, direct x, and so on, so its habit of magnifying these results over others is a positive boon.
Also, I make it a policy to give as few organisations as possible any data they could mine for marketing purposes, and as a windows user, I know windows already has this information, so why should I further propagate to Google, a company that likes to pretend its transparent, but does things like refusing to rule out using gmail data to refine its ad business in the future, or linking the actual pages you visit, NOT just what you search for, in their profile of you.
Its an unpopular view, but in this case microsoft is just be[tter.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
You can't win if you don't play.
A better question would be: Why is Microsoft working on a "desktop search tool"? Yahoo, I can can see, but Microsoft? They produce the damn OS, which has a search built into it!!! Maybe they are going to have an animated cat this time. Yeah, that will work. Ooooh - how about an opossum? It can go to sleep on the desktop when you aren't searching! That would be cute. Or how about a Penguin... nah, scratch that.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
msn search, "Microsoft Windows Cracks"
-all sorts of pages at microsoft about piracy etc.
google search, "Mircosoft Windows Cracks"
-brings up crackfind.com, keygen.us etc etc...
nice one bill.
As anyone noticed how MSN search sponsored sites area is almost exactly the same as google's?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
MSN.com comes up completely improperly formatted in IE 5.1 for Mac (OS9). And then it locks the browser up.
Why is it that in IE for Mac, the pages I seem to have the most problems with are Microsoft pages?!?
the slashdot community makes the false assumption that you need the best product to win the market. Just as a warning, msn might just have the biggest share of search users in the future, there is nothing to base that on today, but don't be surprised.
"Just a sec - I'm MSNing for info on bringing up a dual headed card in Slackware..."
It just doesn't sound right...
3 consecutive front page stories on slashdot, as they say all publicity is good publicity. Has /. now officially been assimilated? Can Commander Taco of Borg or Cowboy neal of Borg shed some light on this?
Google has a number of advantages, like:
- Repeat the search on USENET, Images and Froogle
- No heavy graphics
- Spell checking
- Indexes and converts PDF and other formats.
Also, it returned results from the United Kingdom, even though the UK only box wasn't ticked!Also, the layout and the sponsored links are a blatant ripoff of Google.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
If this were any other company in the world, I don't know if anyone would care...
But I'm sure Microsoft is going to bundle it with everything else, so it'll at least be viable if not actually deserving of whatever position it gets.
I will say, though, that paying for hits with Overture was a lot more cost effective than google, even though the hits cost more.
I guess people don't go to google to shop... or at least they don't go there if they know what they want.
Being able to direct a large crowd of people who are eager to conform like MS now can is a real business asset.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
See: http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=&FORM=QB HP
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
the page renders horribly in firefox or is it just me also in konqueror the page renders fine but the earch buttong does not work.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
As part of my research, I tried out this search engine. I searched for 'disparity compensation light fields'. The first result? A page about a writing competition which included neither 'disparity', 'compensation', 'light', or 'fields'. Cracking.
?
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: You can type more than that for your comment.
This just came to me yesterday, though it's probably not new. Just thought it was funny in this context. (For those who don't look it up, the best route from Haugesund to Trondheim, Norway is through England, Belguim, etc.) Subject: The risk of using MSN for Route planning (would be humour except it is true) Route finders are fantastic. They save so much time and effort. Try this to see what I mean: 1. Go to http://mappoint.msn.com/DirectionsFind.aspx 2. In the Start section, select "Norway" from the list box and enter "Haugesund" into the "City" field 3. In the End section, select "Norway" from the list box and enter "Trondheim" into the "City" field 4. Click on "Get Directions" ...
Well done Microsoft.
Microsoft always plays this tortoise/hare game with its software. Every few weeks, msn search will get incrementally, imperceptibly better. I remember back in the day, IE was crap and used Netscape. Slowly, I wound up using IE more-and-more until Firefox/Mozilla came along. If the guys at Google stay on their toes and don't become complacent they shouldn't have a problem, though.
Although I do not like Microsoft, for us the consumer, having the two giants smashing at each other for market share is nothing but good. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've felt Google has gotten lazy. Lots of the search results are nothing but sales sites these days ... with all that brain power they brag about, you'd think they could have done something about that by now.
I'm not suprised at all that the Desktop search needs Internet Exploder 5.x + or Windows 2000 / XP. Although imho, this is what hurts MS a lot. Trying to tie down a service to your OS when there are viable alternatives out there that are possibly better and more secure, ends up making you look like an idiot.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
Let's teach these search gurus some basic set theory.
To be fair, maybe OR works differently in MSN. On the other hand, that blue background is so ugly.
The MSN Search page includes a "Letter from Bill Gates."
Of course I only assumed it'd be scrawled across the page in three or four run-on sentences and little smileys, but it was just Times New Roman.
Sighhhhh...
On MSN's side: they're offering search results in RSS format. This is good; but: (and you know there's always a "but" when Bill is involved), their RSS results have usage restrictions:
Copyright © 2005 Microsoft. All rights reserved. These XML results may not be used, reproduced or transmitted in any manner or for any purpose other than rendering MSN Search results within an RSS aggregator for your personal, non-commercial use. Any other use of these results requires express written permission from Microsoft Corporation. By accessing this web page or using these results in any manner whatsoever, you agree to be bound by the foregoing restrictions.
MSN search looks interesting, for now. But I'm not giving up my Google anytime soon.
Having said that: it would be interesting to hear from some MSN people about the architecture: how many servers? What OS? What kind of interconnect? etc.
The search page isn't www.msn.com, but http://beta.search.msn.com/
(Which I btw can't see properly because of bad design from microsoft, but then that was to be expected)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I can't see any reason why a search engine's output should have a minimum width, but there it is in the CSS file (http://beta.search.msn.com/s/common.css:
Amusing, it's not just us mortals who have to fight with Microsoft's idiotic nonstandard browsers:
I wonder how many man-hours are wasted each year on rubbish like this.
When I use msn search it will automaticly redirect to the dutch version, searching only .nl sites. Even when I click one of the links in this thread it will append &geovar=76
I guess reading English sites is considered harmful.
I tried a list of regular search terms that I use on images.google every day and was very disappointed with the returns from msn's "comparable" offering. Some very search terms returned few or no replies whatsoever. What kind of images search engine doesn't index kinky porn?
I find it funny that this is a feature...
"the first-ever search engine built from the ground up by Microsoft"
Also, does anyone know what "25 markets" would mean?
judge by yourself...
Google
MSN Search
There is nothing more to say.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
What I fail to understand, mind you it's very EARLY for me, is why didn't M$ just buy Google and adapt it to their tastes ? Google certainly has the hooks to control search results, as evidenced way back by the "more evil than satan" joke query. Microsoft could certainly use that kind of functionality to their advantage in subtle ways, as they've always loved doing.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The page crashes (freezes) my IE (6.0 on xpsp2) here at work ;-)
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Is there a way for it to NOT trying to guess your country and then when failing throwing up a language you don't want (and don't understand) for the interface? Due to the company I work at being finnish I always get thrown to .fi and all in finnish despite being in Sweden. Quite annoying and no obvious way to change it.
Do four images of Bill Gates as a Borg on the front page of your favourite news site scare anyone else?
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
With Microsoft, who gives a shit? Remember their "big security push"? Nothing came of it. Everyone who has a clue knows you can't just "bolt on" security in a couple of months. It was all about marketing, not product. Just like monkey-boy's "developers, developers, developers" - all hype, no content.
I checked the server logs at work yesterday, and for every legit visitor over the last 10 days there were 8 attempts to "hack in" using Winblows security holes (stupid script kiddies - why don't you at least check to see what OS is running before repeatedly trying different methods - oh, right, you're Microsnot Fanbois).There's a LOT of msnbots (MicroSoft Nuisance roBOTs) out there.
Instead of wasting time and resources on a search engine, they should first fix their piece of shit insecure operating system. Or maybe they can use google's search engine to find a patch? Buy a clue?
What the world needs isn't a Microsoft search engine - it's for Microsoft to clean up their own mess.
On second thought, it'll never catch on. Too much research involved in research.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
In all, four out of the first ten results are actual good results, the rest is commercial spam, which simply contain lots of times the word "Romania".
If you search "Romania" on google, you get the CIA country profile, Romanian Embassy site, tourism guides, official pages, etc. Ten out of the first ten results are good results.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Er, no thanks. In their own words:
"The current application will be terminated."
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
Just repeated the test I did when the Accoona search engine came out in 2004-12: a search on the name "Bill Clinton":
The top result on MSN search is from a .biz domain called The Nostradamus Mabus Project: In Search of the Anti-Christ. Anti-trust jokes aside, this is a crazy result, and makes anyone looking for serious information reach for the page down key immediately.
In contrast, the top result on Google is Bill Clinton's official White House biography.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Have you noticed that the sponsored sites that the MSN search results shows come from Overture? isn't it a service from Yahoo?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
While it's near-impossible for an encyclopedia to be completely objective, i really do believe that the people editing Encarta are still far more objective than many of those "editing" Wikipedia -- ie less likely to use it to express their own political views, etc. For more information on Wikipedia bias, see here, here, or here. The list goes on, but i'm not going to list any more links -- that's what Google (or MSN search, for that matter) is for.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
I tried to refute all the arguments about "bill gates sucks" and "google is the best" results (I thought that since MSN search has a smaller index, it would return fewer results for any query) by searching for "google sucks" in both search engines, but I was foiled by MSN search: Google sucks on Google: 1.180.000 results Google sucks on MSN: 2,631,202
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
But it sure seems like some people at Microsoft thinks that, since when I go to search.msn.com from my computer here in Denmark, I'm automatically redirected to their seach page in german.
I guess it's good enough for some things
MSN
Google
And the Weapons of mass destruction on MSN works better than Google
I'll stop using google when someone else makes a news site similar to theirs, but without a right wing bias built into the search routine. I'm not all that keen with them for censoring news on their Chinese site at the request of the PRC government
Not that crappy actors :)
Probably because I mention Bill Gates on my homepage, in reference to My Meeting Bill Gates Photo.
It is the little things in life..
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
I will stop using google when you pry my keyboard from my cold, dead hands.
I wouldn't cross the street to piss on MSN Search.
It does give different result and I admit I might be Googling around at MSN's search just to check if I get better result. So far, with names, I do.
Also, I notices the neat RSS link at the end of the result page. Link it and put it into your news reader. Voilà. You get updates on that search as they come. That's Google kind of idea, but they missed that one.
Usage Stats
So I searched Google and MSN for "What are the movies nominated for 2005 best picture oscars?" and the first link google gave me had a nice list of all the nominee's for this year's Oscar's. The MSN search #1 listing was to snarkcake.com which seems to be just a blog site.
.40). If that means anything.
In MSN's defense they did get the results *quicker* then google (.32 to
CB.
I ask for a car and I get a computer. How's about that for being born under a bad
Enter some text in the search bar and then hit tab. Instead of tabbing over to search like in IE, it changes the type of search.
Fuck these guys at Microsoft who purposefully break shit on people.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
And here's my comment to their Feedback form:
Sigh.
My motorbike travels in Chile.
Google rocks! MSNS sucks! ....
No!
MSNS rocks! Google sucks!
No!
Truth: competition is good.
It is completely wrong. It is comparing the msn portal site instead of the search site.
Besides which, perhaps the sparseness of bytes on googles site could be more to do with googles 'cheapness' rather than trying to speed up your download. Seriously, with packet switched networks the way they are, a few extra bytes isnt going to mean much to the end user, but probably quite a bit to the search service provider.
I.O.U One Sig.
Dear computing world, google owns the search engine market. You can't compete please stop trying, we don't want your Microsoft bug ridden crap search engines when we have the anti-MS-company Google. When you say what we want to hear AND act upon it we might care. Untill then please move all your staff OFF bullshit projects which will go no where and fix your OS and browser.
:)
Signed, AC.
P.S. If you want to send your hitmen after me just google my name.
It'd be interesting to see who gets control of that domain....
Why not post an actual link to the new non-beta search engine in the summary?
MSN Search
My motorbike travels in Chile.
What if I set up my robots.txt to forbid MSN to crawl my site?
What if a maybe a hundred, then a thousand people did that?
Is it fair to interfere with the quality of a search engine?
Just musing, but I seriously consider bannig MSN from my site, just to keep them at bay...
Surprise, surprise... Microsoft has built yet another page that is totally broken in anything but Internet Explorer. They seem to be the only major company in the world that makes no effort to display cleanly in other browsers (even Opera's website comes up beautifully in Firefox).
They just don't get it. And because of this, I don't think Google has much to worry about.
Google finds 57 results. MSN search finds 317 results. That's what they say on the first page, at any rate. On the next page the number of hits somehow magically shrinks to 20.
i tried a simple query that works well with the "i'm feeling lucky" google feature:
"freebsd ports"
with google the 1st answer/i'm feeling lucky link is, luckily, www.freebsd.org/ports/
(that's a very simple one, i would even type the complete url if i wasn't lazy)
guess what, msn didn't even list www.freebsd.org/ports/ in the FIVE first pages (50 results) the closest was www.freebsd.org/ports/java.html at rank ~25 !!!
i'll wait for the next goundbreaking update to use this one...
to be honest i think that's because msn forces you to do some kind of localized search (i tried that in france), but it didn't listed the french page for freebsd ports, but a lots of links in other foreign languages (anyway the french google links to the correct page)
Because we all know that "built from the ground up by Microsoft" equals "quality"! :-)
Read my blog.
Now its been reported on Slashdot... MSN Search is about to die...
It seems to have the same problem as Google, requiring me to add -kelkoo -reviewcentre -bargainbubble -pricerunner -everyotherdamnpointlesslinksite to searches whenever I want real information about electronics equipment and not skeleton sites linking to other sites with "There are 0 reviews for this product - would you like to write one?" all over the place. Yes, I'm angry! Give me back my old Internet please!
I also assume the chances of Google / MSN / Altavista et al actually screening out these sites unless specifically requested are about nil as well.
Not to be too egocentric, but when I search for my own name on Google, the first 10 results include several articles I wrote in the past. On MSN Search, none of those articles show up in the first 10 PAGES.
They may be in there somewhere beyond page 10, but in that case MSN's ranking has a serious problem. Those articles include my first and last name next to each other. All results except the first one on MSN contain both my first and last name in different parts of the text. It's pretty elementary to rank documents with the search terms close together higher than documents where the search terms are far apart.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
I googled Linux and got "Results 1 - 10 of about 89,900,000 for linux [definition]. (0.11 seconds)"
I MSN searched Linux and got "1-8 of 97,751,005 containing linux (0.18 seconds)"
Looks like Microsoft is getting their shit together.
...seeing four of billie's face in a row on /.
sorry for the bad handwriting
Until now, Google was my preferred search engine, so that is what I am comparing against.
I clicked the link in the story, which brings up the main MSN page. It's yet another site that doesn't use the whole browser width (and that is getting really annoying). It's also full of crap I'm not interested in (more on that below) and I notice that it tried to pop something up.
There's an ad for their search, so I clicked that, but it redirects via atdmt.com, which is either a tracker site or an ad site. Either way, it was on my blocklist, so the browser went nowhere.
So far, not impressed.
Then it occurred to me that the search site is probably separate from the main MSN site, so I tried search.msn.com. Lo and behold, a lightweight page for entering my search query, in a similar manner to Google's. No ads on this page either! I liked that. OK, so the URL is a little longer than Google's, but these days I do my searching from that input field in the top-right corner of Konqueror/Firefox.
It also correctly detected which country I'm in - presumably from the IP address or hostname. (The MSN main page didn't, and gave me loads of US-centric stuff instead, which is what I meant by stuff I'm not interested in.) It also used localised text for the country I'm in (German). That's all well and good, but my browser settings actually specify en-gb first, so they get a point for being clever and detecting the country, but lose 10 points for completely ignoring my own preferences. I would expect the page in German if I went to msn.de, but the .com one shouldn't make such assumptions.
I tried searching for a few various things, and compared the results to Google. It seemed that some of the more obscure terms had better results in the MSN search. Certainly, each of the two would return a different set of results for the same query. I can't really say that one was definately better than the other - this is one of those things you have to try for yourself, and it will probably only become apparent after a non-trivial amount of usage.
One other thing that must be said to both MSN and Google: stop using bloody fixed width columns!
I have a screen width of 1280, and in this day and age, much larger sizes are becoming more common. I want the width used more effectively so I don't have to scroll down as much. The HTML isn't even difficult! Annoying things like this give people reason to choose one site over another.
-- Steve
...it makes it easy to find information that's previously taken me hours to discover my library doesn't cover.
Computer subjects are the worst. A high school library will almost certainly have the latest Animorphs book, but the newest book about PC hardware says the CPU is in a 40-pin DIP package.
When I tried to research quantum computing for an English paper in college, I only found one book, and that was an eBook I couldn't even print pages out of, much less take the book through checkout. I ended up using course presentations from university professors' websites as source material.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
How could they handle massively // queries with windows machine ?
It will crash some days. no ?
I realize that Slashdot is Google country, but diversity in search engines is very good for the internet. MSNs new engine is useful because it uses a different method than Google to index content - and it presents different results.
-- $G
Did anyone notice the google style text ads next to searches? I thought it was actual google ads at first, but the "see your ad here" link takes you to an MS site (which doesn't open with firefox and the download IE link is the same color as the background :)
I am doing some research on Neural networks open source. So I did a search on the topic by typing in both Google and MSN search: neural networks open source. Google is clearly the winner as far as the top relevant results are concerned: The top Google result is a link to the AI Depot. The top MSN Search result is a link to Knowledge Discovery Keys - totally irrelevant. MSN still need to work on their algorithm a bit more, Google kick ass!
Looks like they've been doing some market research: http://search.msn.ch/settings.aspx
SafeSearch: Choose how you want to filter results.
+ Strict
Filter sexually explicit text and image results (except spanking)
+ Moderate
Results interspersed with titilation. Teasing but pleasing.
+ Off* (Sponsored by KY corporation)
Stop your grinning and drop your linen
* High risk of IETDs
I just tested the MSN search engine. I searched for a string which resulted in 5 pages of hits. I clicked on the 'next' link (to browse the second page of results), and found the page empty. I repeated this with the same result two or three times before it worked as it should.
"scholars never agree and fools seldom differ"
Microsoft innovates again; takes the now industry standard look of search engine results established by Google and "embraces and extends" them.
The end result is that we have another search engine that looks just like Google.
For a company that just paid out a 32 billion dollar dividend and records record profits, you'd think they'd actually try something new instead of trying to hone-in on someone else's game. But then again, that's why shareholders love 'em -- they are a money machine.
I would like to know more bits like this :-)
unused account
Once u search you cannot return to main page ( unless you press the back button of your browser), M$ is trying to create a lock-in by making ppl keep searching once they have begun.
Senthil
Googlebombs only work because of PageRank. PageRank is patented by Google. WHAT IS GOING ON?
typical M$
On Google: The topmost link was a sponsored link from download.com to download Firefox. on MSN Search: The topmost link was a sponsored link from secureie.com. "Download Secure IE Web Browser and Save - www.secureie.com. Compare Secure IE Browser to Firefox and see why it's better. Secure IE seals browser security leaks to provide a faster and..." It's made by a company called Winferno software. I think that was a poor choice of names ...
MSN search results:
"windows": 149,875,141
"linux": 17,660,857
Google results:
"windows": 289,000,000
"linux": 224,000,000
Is MSN hiding any linux page? Odd.
But I think Microsoft's recent initiatives have done a great deal to curb the idiot syndrome of not knowing how to secure a box. The simple fact is that no computer illiterate moron is going to be running Linux unless they bought that $200 Walmart PC with Linspire or whatever.
How many lines there are unless you consider how many of those lines link to images that will have to cause another GET.
you cannot search for dirty pics like you can on Google/Yahoo/Altavista
= Grow a brain...
.... ActiveX version?
yes, this is a joke.
the first-ever search engine built from the ground up by Microsoft
is this a feature or a warning?
i'm not a particularly avid microsoft basher and i have nothing against using their software when it's the best tool for the job. still, i have to say that based on my experience, pretty much all of their good software was acquired from other sources. anything that they wrote themselves from the ground up (or have significantly re-written since acquiring it) tends to be, well, less than stellar.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Do a search for microsoft failures and you get the download page for the .Net framework version 1.1 redistributable as the top result.
I don't know what the fuck is about MS that drives people to say or believe such rubbish. If Bill Gates crapped in a bowl, someone like would be posting:
Well, this crap stinks, but it takes too much time to configure my own.
Well, I don't really like this crap, but MS makes the best bowls and I really need a bowl for my salad so I guess I'll just have to take the bundle.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Below the box I got a checkbox 'Only from Australia' (it got redirected to http://search.ninemsn.com.au apparently)
Only problem -- I'm located in India...
Searching on Google, I was number one on the hit parade, and they had "about 2,560" web pages with my family name, in .40 seconds, and 253 web pages that mention it directly (in un-spamified form), and my website was first on the page.
Searching on search.msn.com, my site wasn't directly on the front page, but instead a deep subpage was listed, and there were only 1228 web pages with my family name in .12 seonds, and only 68 web pages that mention it directly (in un-spamified form)
Interestingly enough though, on certain random searches that I know fail on Google, I had success on search.msn.com.
I therefor conclude that A) msn is scanning different pages than google, AND B) To do a complete search, you have to use BOTH search engines.
Also, poor old Altavista only found 765 pages with my last name, but my website was first listed.
Alltheweb found 703 pages with my last name, and my website was first listed.
Lycos found 310 pages with my last name, and my website was first listed.
Dogpile found 62 pages with my last name, and my website was first listed.
/Tinfoil_hat_mode=on/
Obviously, msn has determined from my postings at slashdot that I must be anti-Microsoft, and has therefor relegated my site to the tail-end of their search results.
/Tinfoil_hat_mode=off/
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Put in a search for "Miserable Failure", still get Bush. Not so off, after all? ;)
--
Mac OS X--Unix without the assholes^Whassles.
dunno but IE for Mac hasn't been supported for 4 years or something. Actually IE wasn't/isn't a bad Mac browser apart from occasional hangs as you say in OS 9. I used to use it all the time for proofing web sites. Although I don't really bother with it anymore it wasn't too bad
peace
Please note that Wikipedia's number one rule is called NPOV for "neutral point of view", before you go accusing it of widespread bias left and right. Not that it always lives up to the goal of being entirely bias-free, but I'd hardly call Encarta unbiased either, and it makes no claim that objectivity is an object.
And it's not like the two are mutually exclusive, either. If you have Encarta, you can still look up stuff on Wikipedia, compare and contrast their approaches, and learn more from the profit.
But Encarta probably is more suitable for children, because Wikipedia makes little effort to self-censor offensive material that you may not want your child to know about.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I've never crashed a search engine before!
Our usual technique for determining the platform is simply /. the web site (in this case search.msn.com) then read the text which accompanies the http error 500.
Why does it look like Google then?
Living in Sweden, with an English operating syste, Firefix etc. I still get only Swedish results on my searches, despite half an hour of attempts to include searches from all over the world and in any language. Cleared cookies, tried again etc. No change.
Cluttered and bloated looks.
Worse search results.
But it will take a big chunk of the market because it will be force fed to the Joe Sixpacks that don't know anything else but the browsers start-upscreen and its search function, or other browsers.
I'm a perv, so I searched for dirty pictures on MSN much to the same way I do on google. MSN returns nothing dirty, where as Google returns plenty. Meanwhile,
Oh yeh, that's freakin' gre-ate. MSN only takes 1.5X as long to load as /., to wit, 5X as long as Google. And I live in Seattle. Dumbasses..
What really annoys me is that it gives me MSN search in Danish, and only Danish results, and I see no obvious way to turn this off. With Google I can at least go to google.co.uk to get the English version...
Based on the stats from my dinky little website. They certainly keep their crawler going full steam.
My Weblog
Running a few tests against the results shows the MSN search returning proportionally more IIS servers for the same results than Google, Teoma or Yahoo. Analysis here
I have just checked this out with various searches and to say i am shocked at how bad the returned results were is an understatement. I agree with several other readers who say microsoft just dont get it.
Use a browser recommended by Microsoft. Really, do it. And an operating system while you're at it. Don't even ask me about the mail client.
Why is the text input widget so short? That's a real pain when searching for phrases. Why do so mnay sites these days insist on making fixed sized frames/widgets/etc. ratehr than let me expand the windows to make use of my screen.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Which is the best browser?
w ser
t +browser&FORM=QBRE
Ask Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=the+best+bro
Ask MSN: http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=the+bes
"http://search.msn.com"
into my browser bar, and it redirected to
"http://search.msn.nl:80/?geovar=150"
which is all in Dutch.
Do they think I'm near Holland because I live in the UK? Is this somehow related to the flying cars I've been reading about on the Register?
I'm sure on the average google is still the fastest (and most accurate). But when people rip on MSN just to rip on them, you'd better back it up more than once.
;)
Search term:
"effect of steroids on major league baseball"
MSN Search:
Web Results 1-10 of 68,035 containing effect of steroids on major league baseball (0.27 seconds)
Google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 76,100 for effect of steroids on major league baseball. (0.33 seconds)
So as you can see, it's not so obvious as you make it seem. However, google is still my home page
check out the results for this search:F ORM=REIR& q=FUD
http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?
why do IBM and Linux come up in the top two results?
Google:673,000 MSN:167,641 I have also noticed that if you place plus signs in between terms in MSN it finds the exact phrase, Google doesn't.
"I'm in it to win it, and no limit is my home." - Snoop Dog c/o PvP Online (July 12th, 2006)
i have a blog where I've never used my real name. so when i google myself, the site doesn't come up in any results. same with lycos and any other search engine i've used. yet msn searching myself finds it. are they doing domain lookups?
as the subject says. thought I'd point that out.
Yahoo Search has had something similar for ages.
I also get a foriegn site:
http://search.msn.fr/?geovar=150
And I am in Texas! At least you are close to the country it chose. I have a freaking OCEAN AND A GULF between me and France.
(Which, by the way, is the way I'd like to keep it.)
Typical beta software rollout by Microsoft - in my opinion.
Britain's Times Online did a test of the newly launched MSN Search and got a surprise -- Google pages came up! I have a link to that article on my blog at http://sundroid.blogspot.com/
Sun and Fun
It is not logical to compare MSN Search v1 with Google's very mature search engine. Microsoft designed this from the ground up, and this is day one of the release.
I doubt Google's results were so relevant on day one.
Well, I really only use the web for one or two things and MSN's new search failed miserably to find any of the common queries that I am likely to make. See below for a few examples. I'm sticking with Google from now on.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Oh, and I really do get a kick out of this:
"If you cannot find a page that you know exists, send the address to us."
If I had the address, I wouldn't be using a bloody search engine to find it!
The features that are available here include tabs that allow consumers to target searches to the Web, news, images, music, desktop or Microsoft Encarta.
The fact of the matter is that Google already offers these web-based tools, and without much of the marketing and graphical detritus that is pushed by the MSN website.
1) The Web: http://www.google.com. If you don't know about it, you probably should. It's easy as pie to use, accurate as hell in most cases. And if it doesn't show you what you want right away, chances are a bit of grunt work will turn up something useful in short order. Ads are shifted to the right-side of the screen, so as not to impede your ability to pore through the search results. And you can customize the number of results per page, which means less clicking. Meanwhile, MSN spams me with ads at the top and bottom of each search page, in addition to the right side of the page. There are 8 results per page, which means more effort in trying to find information in all the spam.
2) News: http://news.google.com has been my homepage for quite sometime now. It's about a billion times better, easier to use and more current than my previous news home page, http://www.msnbc.com.
3) Images: http://images.google.com wins, hands-down. MSN's Images search looks cleaner, and allows you to filter by color or B/W right from the main search page, but that's about the only advantages it can claim. MSN required 5 clicks before I could get to the 20th page of results; Google gets me there in 2. MSN yields ~81k results; Google yields ~550k.
4) Music: MSN beats Google here, simply because Google doesn't offer any kind of music-searching utility. However, MSN's site isn't much more than an iTunes wannabe. There's no easy way to do a quick search by artist or album from the front page, and most of the links that pop up offer the ability to purchase downloadable songs, not information on the album or artist. Meanwhile, a quick Google for "Son Kite" turns up the home page of the psytrance artist I'm looking for, at the very top of the page. The 2nd link is to a store that sells Son Kite albums. MSN = pwn3d, again.
5) Desktop: You've got to wonder why Microsoft would deign to develop a web-based ActiveX search tool, when the vast majority of PC users out there are running Windows and have this functionality built into the OS. Never mind that I've disabled ActiveX in Internet Explorer 6, and have begun shunning it for the same reasons I'm training myself to use Firefox 1.0 for standard browsing.
6) Encarta: Another tool that Google doesn't offer (yet). I'm gonna remain neutral on this one, since I don't know much about it.
Well while the actual search page is bearable the portal still is most defiantly that, a portal. (The latter is the one /. linked for some reason rather than the search page)
It loads up with a big smiling image of Billy boy with, "A Letter from Bill Gates". And even he is pushing the portal over the search page:
Input from millions of our customers - including me - was crucial to our efforts to make MSN Search the best it can be. If you have not already tried it, I encourage you to visit www.msn.com and type in your question. We'd love to hear what you think, and I promise that we will continue to improve MSN based on your feedback.
I'll be sticking with a search page that does not have an ulterior motive to try and get me over to their portal. Before Google it was nearly accepted that to search you had to deal with some portal page. Now having used Google for so long I won't accept anything less.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Can we stop using gross number of search results as a metric?
Seriously, are you looking at the 2,838,182th page that Google or MSN returns? Hell, Google will only give you 10,000 of the returns anyway, so why does it matter?
I don't think it's a strong indicator of "more content indexed" as we don't know the details of the search algorithms, how dynamic sites are handled, etc.
Also, using number of results as a guide will lead to the search engines giving a larger number of results simply to have a larger number than their competitor. It will not foster good searching techniques.
In a sense, it is like the MHz myth.
Do you, teach, English? If so I kind of really feel for your students because maybe the blind shouldn't lead blind.
Based on your feedback, we have designed the new MSN.com home page to be faster, simpler, and more organized.
So without feedback, you just naturally designed the old page to be slow, complex and unorganized?
Our mission at Microsoft is to use the power of software to solve our customers' toughest problems.
My toughest problem right now is that the computer keeps BSODing!
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The search engine looks very similar to Google after hitting the search button. The search was very fast and as mentioned in previous posts, the results between Google and MSN vary to some degree. The tabs do not work in Firefox and Opera. Maybe it's because I'm using Suse Linux? Doubtful. The frontpage is clean, but I can't help to think that it's a cross between Yahoo and Foxnews.com. I believe I'll stick with Google because:
a) It's a no-nonsense, true search engine.
b) I don't need a frontpage with news. If I want a news site, I'll search for one.
Vince
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
Site doesn't display in Opera 6 (which *is* a modern browser dammit!), gives me same smarmy error message, and has 130 validation errors.
Microsoft: ignoring web standards since 1998!
I notice that the MSN version of AdWords is a tad bit brittle - if you use the search builder to tweak the weighting of you search, they all go away. Which made me wonder if I could get the same effect by explicitly setting those values to their defaults: like so. Now to make a bookmarklet...
Search for Microsoft Sucks on the Swedish version, and you know what I mean. The Canadian one shows up correctly though.
Anyone know if there's a Metatag or other way to disable MSN spidering?
Below are some of the indie artists I searched for - and a link to the readily available and FREE mp3s they are giving away that MS has decided not to include in its "music search".
Sonic Youth (shitload of mp3s for free here)
The Brian Jonestown Massacre (they give away mp3s of all their songs here, though that doesn't stop MS from trying to sell them at 99 cents a pop)
Modest Mouse (a couple free mp3s here)
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
Looks like they are on the right track:
s tards&FORM=SSRE
i lure&FORM=QBRE
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=litigious+ba
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=miserable+fa
look here: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=search.ms n.com
This would be funnier if they used Apacche, but apparently they have a port of IIS to Linux (probably for internal use only.).
Web servers can (and many do) negotiate locale with the web browser. All Web Browsers allow you to set not only one locale, but a list of locales. The Server then checks them in the order given, and uses the first one that matches.
In Firefox, it's under Tools -> Options -> General -> Languages. Once you're there, it's quite intutive. Make sure that [en] or [en-us] is on the top of the list.
You may also want to flush your cookies after doing the above. Some sites set your language preferences in a cookie, and once established, and would ignore the language settings if a cookie already gives them the "right" answer.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
At this point, a search engine is pretty much a search engine. Who cares if you get 2+ billion hits on MSN and only 1.8 billion on google. You going to check every one of those?
I'm more interested in what the top 50 are (at the most) and well, if they are fairly on par performance wise there, I'll stick with what I know and love.
Besides, Google has several advantages over MSN that I think will keep MSN from being able to put even a dent into them.
1. Google has become almost an english word and a positive word at that, while MSN is generally thought of as AOL's ugly little brother.
2. Google has a well established user base and while a few might try out MSN, I doubt many will switch unless MSN can balance their check book and pay their bills or make them famous on the spot or some other miraculous happening.
3. I find it's less awkward to type google.com than msn.com. As it is, the keystrokes for google are burned into my fingers. I don't even have to command them to type it with the brain anymore. I need info, they are right ahead of me there. MSN? Feels a bit awkward to type and really, I don't feel MSN offers enough to be worth switching over.
4. MSN's page looks like shit (about on par with MS's other sites) and is full of annoying ads (for Encarta and other MS junk) and other distractions, while google is clean and simple and the ads are unobtrusive text ads.
So sorry MSN, but I think you have lost the battle before it's even started.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
My business shows up in first position when doing a relevant search using the Microsoft Search.... while with Google I am 400 entries down.
Go Microsoft!!!!
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
It's like 1984 and the Complete Newspeak Dictionary.
Every redesign shoots for a "cleaner look and simplified layout." Hope somebody gets it right by 2050.
MSN's search site is cluttered with advertisements. Because of this, I shall never use it. Note that advertisements box in the search results. There are adds at the top, bottom and right corners of the page. Eventually, the box of advertisements will get so large, he user will see only one search result per page!
search
It's got to be rigged, google and msn aren't the top ones.
Considering how abominably crap XP is at searching, I shudder to think what kind of a heath-robinson frankenstiens monster of a piece of software this new MSN Search undoutedly is.
When the best search capabilities on a Microsoft machine come from Google, surely that says something. Their 'challenge' shoulda been to best them on their OWN Platform" before taking them on online. But then theres no cash is sorting that for poor locked in suckers, so why waste the effort. Typical half-assed Microsoft worldview.
Google shows his bio first, followed by his foundation.
I think I like MSN Search. :)
I love Microsoft's interpretation of my question. Denial or trying to distract me from my goal?
search
Who mediates your information?
Search for anything on MSN. On the bottom click on Advertising.
---------------------
Please Upgrade Your Browser
You are using: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0
To view this site you must use:
Microsoft® Internet Explorer or Netscape® Navigator 4.0 or higher
Click here to find the latest free browser from Microsoft
When I hover over a "Cached" link, it says "http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=986368135098 &lang=en-GB&FORM=CVRE", but when I click on it, it goes to "http://cc.msnscache.co.uk/cache.aspx?q=9863681350 98&lang=en-GB&FORM=CVRE&geovar=207" which gives me a 500 "Unresolved host name".
Search the new msn search for scat. The first thing that comes up is still Microsoft.
MicroScat
A friend pointed this out to me a couple of months ago, and it still hasn't been fixed.
Enjoy the comedy. =)
i worked at MS in the mid 1990's and i worked on campus in redmond, right alongside LYCOS employees that were incorporating their tech into the then-infant MSN.com. did it work completely? no. was it the first time microsoft "really" did search engine? yes.
This new MSN search produces almost equal and sometimes better search results than google. We can expect a search appliance from MSFT soon. If so, google will be in deep dodo. Google is no more a mystery product and is going to be a another netscape!
My site is no longer at the top of the results for my keywords so clearly this new search is pure crap!
For example, they have mappoint.msn.com to compete with mapquest, but how much success has that really had? I remember that the map I used for Waikiki was generated through mappoint by priceline. The directions on the damn thing led me no-the-f***-anywhere near my hotel and I'm still p***ed off.
Linux search:
search.msn.com - 17,660,857 hits
google.com - about 224,000,000 hits
Now I know there are a lot of factors that go into a search, including relavency. But when I run a search, the difference shouldn't be more than 10:1.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
People are quick to point out Google is better because it has the largest index and that is not necessarily true. In November the Google spider made a big push to increase the size of their index and they did this by going deeper into websites, not by finding new sites. Having more pages meant more results in your query on Google but the first few pages of search results reamined unchanged.
My opinion is that Google is the current leader in search. Google uses misspellings, synonyms and stemming and has a good balance between on the page optimization and off the page optimization. MSN seems to give a lot of importance to the keywords within the URL. Yahoo is too susceptible to blog spam but that's another conversation. Google may not be perfect but I think it is the overall leader today.
Use the quotes: MSN returns 9003 records. Google returns 20k.
Google wins.
.16 sec):
.15 sec):
I ran a search for an article I read a couple days ago (or maybe yesterday).
Search term: anandtech dell 1905
I was looking for an article on Anandtech about the new Dell 1905fp(?) LCD monitor
Result from Google (331 results,
The article I am looking for is the very first result.
Result from MSN search (196 results,
The first return is for tiwlux.com???? The article I am looking for does not even appear in the top 50 results.
Uh, wait. I tried it again. I tried the search three times; once last night, once about ten minutes ago, and once about two minutes ago. This last time the article I'm looking for has appeared at #3 on the results list - though the first result is for a toshiba laptop (model 1905) reviewed on Anandtech.
Say it after me...
S-E-T-T-I-N-G-S
(Second link from left under the search word window)
For Ghod's sake, you are the 5000th person to NOT evern TRY to figure it out. No wonder you guys are called "slashdolts". How can you even be running Linux if you can't handle configuring a settings page?!?!?
That'll be a true test of whether Google now owns Firefox or not...
I am greeted with the following when viewing the site in Netscape Communicator:
Why does MSN look like this?
Your browser cannot find our style and presentation information. You're welcome to use the page as is, or upgrade your browser to its latest version. If you're using
Microsoft Internet Explorer, go to the Microsoft Internet Explorer website to install the latest version. If you are using another browser, see your browser's website for
more information.
I have to scroll down a bit to find the search box. No thanks. I'll stick with better search engines that do not rely on proprietary coding to render a simple search page. Google is especially friendly to dial-up users.
google: george w. bush msn search: michael moore
Microsft has built a search page with near perfect XHTML, where google has some catching up to do. I've never had a problem rendering google but it would be nice if they followed standards.
We can only hope that MSN Search was built with a beta version of Frontpage that will produce as nearly-compliant XHTML as MSN Search evidently is. Good idea on this comparison. :)
They've filtered out links to all adulty content. Try searching for 'Britney Naked' or 'hot wet sex' or anything else "naughty"
The first thing I've tried was "SCO". I like Google's results and layout better, but funny thing is Groklaw.com is missing from MSN search on SCO. There is sco.iwethey.org pretty early in the list that itself recommends Groklaw, but no Groklaw...
I can not beleive that any good apage ranking algorithm can make such an omission...
They can't even get their 'msnbot' to behave. I run a tiny website, and the page hits that the MSNbot does is 35% of my traffic. google does only 1.4%. Complete and utter crap. If they are doing that to my tiny website, what are they doing to others? Maybe that's the reason for the slowdown of the internet over the Christmas period? :-)
-- main(s){printf(s="main(s){printf(s=%c%s%c,34,s,34
to life, the universe and everything; Google knows. I'll stick with google.
...at least not in Australia.
I tried clicking on a "cached page" link in a search result, and whaddya know...
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://cc.msnscache.com.au/cache.aspx?
The following error was encountered:
Unable to determine IP address from host name for cc.msnscache.com.au
The dnsserver returned:
Name Error: The domain name does not exist.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I asked MSN Search the question: "What is the best web browser?" Just guess what it said, or check it out yourself! Most /.ers will likely be pleased.
Google does NOT return the same first link as bill on this one
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
(News) 1-10 of 5,329 containing hell (0.30 seconds) Gates on search: 'We were stupid as hell' 101 Elliott Ave. W. : ' ' * Seattle Post Intelligencer * 2/1/2005 He finally figured it out, eh? Seems like he is lagging pretty bad, wait until he finds out where they are now!
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes something special to be different
But disregarding all my intellectual masturbation, here's probably what you wanted: an article by Bill Gates that goes out and admits that Encarta is biased (and more importantly, that it's not possible to create a work like Encarta without introducing bias). As Gates puts perfectly, "the facts depend on where you are coming from."
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
I guess we just have to wait for Microsoft to write two more search engines before it becomes usable.
competition will spur innovation, so it's good to see more players... now the folks @ google can't rest on their laurels since big money is competing with them...
Get your torrents...
Do you notice that Google still seems to be smarter when it comes to knowing what you mean? I study Internet communities and cultures; a search for 'live journal culture' in MSN comes up with pages containing the words live, journal, and culture--nothing useful on the first page at all. Google understands that I really mean 'LiveJournal culture' and finds something good and relevant straight away. Ditto for 'slashdot culture': Google found a Wikipedia article about the Slashdot trolling phenomenon, while MSN just gave me Slashdot articles that mention culture. Google was even helpful when I searched the much vaguer 'internet culture'. MSN will probably work for those who just want to download Winamp, but it will take you much longer to sift through for meaningful results on more specialized topics.
$ lynx -source http://www.msn.com/ | wc -c
37928
$ lynx -source http://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2058
And that's just the HTML. Google has no waste and does not inundate me with ads until after I've searched, and then only with brief text blurbs that are clearly delineated from the search results. I haven't bothered to check, but I doubt MSN search is any more polite after you search than it is before.
THAN MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE BOTHERED TO CHECK! Here are the REAL comparisons, comparing search home to search home, search results to search results, and news portal to news portal, instead of the dishonest comparison of the SMALLEST page on Google with the LARGEST page on MSN as you have done with your biased FUD. Here, I will even bother to linkify the urls so even such a lazy Google fanboy anti-MS zealot could verify it:
Search home:
$ lynx --source http://search.msn.com/ | wc -c
2907
$ lynx --source http://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2498
Search results:
lynx --source http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=search | wc -c
19608
$ lynx --source http://www.google.com/search?q=search | wc -c
14068
News portals:
$ lynx --source http://www.msn.com/ | wc -c
29971
$ lynx --source http://news.google.com/ | wc -c
74175
What will you say now? This is the result you would have got if you had only bothered to check. Surprised? But of course if you had bothered to check, you wouldn't have posted it, because it is incompatible with your MS-bashing Google-fanboy agenda, isn't it?
IEXPLORE.EXE - Application Error ....
(Yes, really)
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
The first result for "linux is better than windows" (without the quotes) is a page titled "Windows Server 2003 better than Linux"! One could argue that since the phrase was not inside quotation marks, the result is valid, but the first result that google produces for the same query is much more relevant.
Thank you. I wasn't looking for long winded diatribes on the definiton of truth, I wanted to know if there were facts my students may use that are inaccurate.
"the facts depend on where you are coming from"
I imagine when Bill said this he was referring to his Anti-trust case. Or the higher quality ratings of Apple. Honestly, though this idea is idiotic. Facts are not relative, as there is always a single description that is accurate. The account (you say summary) is NOT fact, but opinion. How people confuse the two is difficult for me to understand.