Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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
Searching for my first name (very common) and family name (rare), google gives me pages associated with me or some homonym. MSN search gives me pages associated with both names but not on the same line, i.e. not related to me.
Google Image search also gives much more hits than the MSN equivalent.
MSN does not have a spelling checker.
So for these, MSN search is not as good as google.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Search in both "fonew"
MSN: * Were you looking for fone
Google: Did you mean: phone
so, it does have corrective facilities, but google works better.
Now, the ultimate, searching for "par hiltn"
MSN: * Were you looking for par hilton
Google: Did you mean: paris hilton
Mind you, google does have a special affinity with the woman, so we will let them off.
liqbase
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.
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.
Furthermore, the first news hit I get for 'Linux' is an article in Computable, "Microsoft: veiligheid van Linux is een mythe". Translated, "Microsoft: safety of Linux is a myth". Second and third news item are ok (skype and cheap linux laptops). I do sense a bit of bias here, but it might be accidental. All in all, a less than happy user has left the MSN site, probably to never return.