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Inspecting MSN Search
ins0maniac writes "I compared Yahoo, Google and MSN's image search. I noticed that, MSN's search had images from only a few sites. I searched for keywords britney spears and randomly checked few pages upto page number 20 and found that the 400 images were only from 3 domains :| 5in9.com, celebritypicturesarchive.com and nabou.com. This is totally weird as it doesn't seem like a search engine, but a collection of few online galleries." There's a number of other interesting notes in the entry about the new search engine. Also, Britney.
I already have all 400 of those.
..Is a revenue stream. The galleries in question probably pay for dominance. Yeah, this seems contrary to a full free search, but at least the results are on subject.
The real task, it would seem, would be to find a way to have the engine return the proper pictures for the proper searches (so typing in Daddy's birthday doesn't result in pictures of some 50 something dude banging some barely legal chick with a party hat on.)
Stuff like that.
I searched for "britney spears nude goat dildo sparcstation" and didn't find a single thing.
http://mirrordot.com/stories/5defdb2c0e9cac7c89624 a2594f96717/index.html
mirrordot doesn't seem to have archived all the images yet though...
For research, I checked out some of those pictures returned by the Britney search.
Many of the thumbnails displayed aren't the same picture that's retrieved when you click on the link. So, their cache must be outdated already. When I'm browsing thumbnails, I expect...no I demand...my search engine to return the appropriate photos!
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
Your logic is true for more than just webpages. It spans basically Microsoft's entire software library. Balmer's arrogantly stated that it "one mistake" was that it didn't get involved in the 'search' industry earlier, but anyone who has followed Microsoft's trail can tell you that thier late to the table more often than not. And even when they are on time, the product is often a faulty or damaged good that doesn't operate at the level of other competitor products.
Ex.
-IE debacle, where Microsoft played catch-up to Netscape and other existing browsers after failing to neglect thier need in earlier years.
-Direct3D, which played second fiddle to OpenGL for years in usability and features till Microsoft finally began adopting parts of OpenGL's paradigm for computer graphics.
-The modern desktop GUI. A product of Apple in many respects, but later was adopted by Microsoft.
-Powerpoint, Visio and other 'Office' products. They were created by other companies, and then consumed by Microsoft.
And the list goes on and on. Today thier trying to same with hand-held media players (derived from the success of iPods), search technologies (coming from Yahoo, Google, and other succesfull search/advertisement ventures), spyware detection and many other Microsoft 'Innovations' that are soon to hit the market.
On the flip side, is if you do a search for "best operating system", your first result is linux.org. In fact, I was not even able to find Microsoft listed. Amiga and QNX even came up before Windoze.
Guess the search engine is not so bad after all.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
> what about "natalie portman naked petrified hot grits"?
It's really odd you mention that. That's exactly how I got *here*.
However,
Finally, MS has never really been known as an industry leader. They are a huge marketing machine. There's nothing wrong with that, you just have to realize that you don't have to be a market leader to be a success. I think that classic "tech" people often forget this.