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Microsoft Claims Worlds Best Search Engine Soon
kw writes "Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday. "What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa. That timing would presumably coincide more or less with the launch of Vista."
maybe Vista will have a default link to this site for everything that you do in Vista, more or less like the trick in IE now where any misspelling will lead you to msn search by default. That way you'll get the "more hits than google" allright. Still won't make you a good search engine though.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Yeah, and in six months, I'll have a first post.
I don't believe it for a second.
Why is the European president talking about taking over the American market?
Should that be Balmers job?
liqbase
Microsoft announces thier next product will not suck. What did you expect them to say? Be honest and say it will?
*ahem*vapourware*ahem*
Sounds like the same old story, yet again, still, what else can you come to expect other than making an unbased claim that they're going to index the internet 'better than google'.
American automakers, despite making decent cars in recent years have yet to regain a good reputation. They could make a car that ran on air and exhausted perfume and would never need maintenance or repair, and people would still rather buy a Toyota.
Fool me once, shame on you. Can't get fooled again.
I don't mind that it's Microsoft, so long as the site is accessible from multiple operating systems and browsers. I honestly don't mind who it is, but I would appreciate seeing the link-farm problems disappearing. A competitor getting rid of them, and without plastering adverts of their own everywhere, would get my searching.
Cheers,
Ian
But that sounds an awful lot like marketing speak. Until I see otherwise I'm throwing this in with the "iPod Killers."
- Bright people working for them
- msnbot has been crawling as much as googlebot for well over a year
Put those two together: a good source of data and a bunch a bright people and you should be able to build a great search engine. I've been waiting for MSN to turn up the juice for a while now. I've recently been seeing some signs of it, I don't doubt there are better things to come.Until three months ago, microsoft search seemed to favor front pages of sites to a ridiculous degree. Most of the traffic to the sites I monitor came in from the msn search engine to the front page. This was despite the fact that the crawler had visited scores of sub-pages. The only reason I can think of for this is that branded search terms would probably give better results. If you search for the name of a company, you would almost be certain to get their home page. It was almost no good for finding facts though. Recently this has begun to change and sub-pages are starting to see hits referred from msn search.
I'm hoping that Yahoo picks things up too. With their recent purchase of del.icio.us, they have another fairly substantial datasource of popularity of pages. I'm hoping that they start giving Google a run for their money as well. I'm less optimistic with them though as their relevency team seems to be out of touch with users such as myself. They seem to highly favor in-house content over better external content and they seem to think that much of what people search for is items to purchase rather than facts or even product reviews.
"No chairs were hurt in the making of this product."
they just have to patch the new IE shipped with Vista so that it redirects everything from Google to OurNewMSN.com ... provided that they're able to ship Vista in such large numbers that this move is relevant, anyway...
This year will be the year of the Linux desktop!
as a one-liner, cliche, eh?
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
So perhaps maybe Microsoft can build a search engine solution that is "better" than Google. Of course, there's no way to know until it is useable.
However - and this is big - how can Microsoft change the habits and behavior of many millions of users? Google has almost become synonymous with "web search" in the hearts and minds of millions. Particularly among the folks under 20 (lots and lots of people in my life), the phrase "Google it" is used maybe more than once a day. I like to use much of Google as it is - familiar, reliable (as much as I need it to be), and always extremely quick.
Can Microsoft become more important and more used than Google? I guess anything's possible, but I think time might tell us otherwise.
A Passionate Independent Musician
Nice. Related: Relerank? How original.
Why do they do it? Is Microsoft THAT fucking insecure?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Google's results have gotten pretty lousy in the last couple of years. Their algorithms worked great 3 years ago. People have learned how to take advantage of the algorithms, and now the results are crap. Try to search for information about something, and you'll get the top 100 matches to sites trying to sell something remotely related to it. If Microsoft can figure out a way to separate informational sites, commerce sites, and opinion sites - and allow you to get what class you want - they can beat Google, at least as far as quality of results.
They will learn from Google, and make a clean and easy to use interface.
They will surely make some typical Microsoft moves leaving every geek in the world thinking "What were they smoking when they designed this?!". They will surely make some typical Microsoft moves leaving every geek thinking "This is evil.". But most users won't have these thoughts.
And it will be the default home page and default search engine for IE7.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Is this just Microsofts old tricks of anouncing lots of new products, to take hype and attention away from what is actually out there. Recently we had Origami, and now the world's best search engine.
And why 6 months, what will they do that is so magical in 6 months?
Now maybe a "Google is dying" troll can finally get off the ground.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
Gee.
c king/
1) Balmer threatens to kill Google. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/05/chair_chu
2) Google suddently has all these issues with analysts, the government, etc.
3) Microsoft announces search engine.
Naah, nothing suspicous here...
I have trouble believing that MS will launch anything in 6 months, never mind on time. It would certainly be a change for them. There is only one group of people that will believe this story... the people that don't know how to use a search engine. If you already know how to use Google or Yahoo, the improvements that are talked about in the story are not needed. Using a search engine is not a black art or anything, but it does require you to be smarter than the proverbial blonde, in the same way that owning a Ferrari doesn't make you a good driver, a brilliant search tool will not suddenly make you able to find anything and everything on the Internet. I don't believe that it is possible to make improvements to searching the Internet in such leaps and bounds as what is claimed. To become more relevant than Google in six months is a claim that cannot readily be tested, unless of course MS will have their 'buddies' in Washington make it happen ???
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Microsoft is rich and all, but couldn't Google stop a hostile takeover?
It comes bundled with a Phantom Console that runs Linux and a copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
* Microsoft will ship its most secure flagship Vista this year
* Microsoft will dominate the digital lifestyle soon
* Microsoft will be better than iTunes any day now
* Microsoft will soon fucking kill Google
* Microsoft will soon prevail with its Windows Media architecture over the standard standards
* Microsoft is not evil
So in 6 months, you'll have a fabulous search engine that has no issues whatsoever with turning your search data over to the government.
Brilliant!!!
The keyword?
we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place
Not desktop, not user browser, not result list. Market place exactly.
I think Overture tried that already: selling positions in search. It was a flop.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
AltaVista ?
"However - and this is big - how can Microsoft change the habits and behavior of many millions of users?"
AltaVista used to be *the* search engine a long time ago. So you could go back a few years and ask the same question about Google.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Better for Microsoft, maybe. However, for those who don't use Windows, and dont want the result of every query to be "Microsoft", "Alamo Car Rentals" or "Barnes and Noble" the choice will probably continue to be easy.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Forgive me for sounding cynical, but we've been hearing a steady stream of these announcements for years now from multiple companies.
If they were going to have a search engine better than Google, they would just do it, not announce it 6 months in advance. What, do they think that we need to prepare for this momentous event? Like our society isn't ready for a search engine of this power yet, so they need to warn us 6 months in advance to give us time to prepare?
Stop making announcements and do it already.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
...just like they came through with killin' SPAM... I use Outlook and I still get tons of junk, plenty of which is caught and moved to JUNK, but plenty of which is not. Brilliant filters too, they know that I can read those spanish ads... or those hyroglyphic messages... BRILLIANT! I hate Microsoft with such a passion for their evil ways, their complete lack of interest in WHAT WE WANT, their inability to create safe software, their lack of understanding that integrating their shitty browser in to Windows is just a huge mistake... lose the antitrust battle and nothing changes... waaaahhhhhhhHH! OH YEAH... who agrees that M$ had old buy Netscape and then let it get run in to the ground? MS couldn't buy it (that'd be anticompetitive) so they got their 'partners' at AOL to do it for 'em! Right?!
Do or do not. There is no try. --Yoda
Anyone remember the "Google killer" rumors from Microsoft, and when they later unveiled it, it was this earth shattering masterpiece?
Since that fiasco*, I'll be a pessimist about these news.
* = it's not really that terrible for a modern engine IMHO, but when Google exist and is at least as good, why switch? It seems most ended up using that logic.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
If this isn't vapor ware, why in G*d's name do they alert the competition of this fact? I thought the normal practice was to slam your competition suddenly and without warning, which in my book doesn't include touting future plans before you're forced to do so.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
If Microsoft can figure out a way to separate informational sites, commerce sites, and opinion sites - and allow you to get what class you want
They can't even allow me to select the words I want in a paragraph!
It's the whole thing or none at all. If they can't resist telling me what I want to select, they will not make it easy for me to visit the sites I want.
You can't take the sky from me...
Wasn't MSN search supposed to already be better than Google at the time of it's launch? For me, this is just corporate bullshit to increase some stock exchange ratings.
That is a great claim, but inquiring minds will wait and see.
Google offers everything for free (with a little bit of advertising,) can Microsoft claim that? I think not.
If Google offers a free O/S, that would be hard to beat.
Don't be evil, speak no lies, and throw no chairs.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
So less relevant in his own area then (which includes my own). That's rich!!
"Desktop System better than Microsoft's". Oh well maybe next year.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
The frequency of vaporous announcement from MS seems to have increased dramatically recently:
2 7200/ 13/1925229/ 24/1734257
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/20/02
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02
I don't have mod points to mod you up :(
... ...
Vista, the new Office... remember all the announcements on the new UI and how 'innovative' it is? Same for X-box's UI...
microsoft's cycle:
-hype
-announce
-hype
-release
-apologies for bugs
-hype the next release
US, Britain, and Europe? So they are going to leave the rest of the world (yes I know sometimes it's hard to remember we exist, but honestly people!) out cold? I guess I'll just have to keep on using Google, what a shame ...
>> Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google
Microsoft just don't have what it takes.
It won't be at all innovative and it will be so skewed towards whatever products or services Microsoft are selling that it just won't be useful. The only way they will get market share is becuase they will make it difficult to not have their search engine as the default in vista. No doubt some 'security agent' or somesuch will keep resetting it if you change it.
I don't understand why the scientists of today haven't genespliced wings into pigs to celebrate such announcements
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
I'm sure that Google is currently in a state of panic...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
They've claimed to have the best OS for years too, and we're still waiting for that.
Or do they really mean "We'll have a lame-ass beta version of search in six months, but once we've worked out the bugs, it will be better than Google. Trust us".
Once again, Microsoft finds itself trying to play catch up, as the world of computing moves beyond Microsoft's desktop monopoly.
Holloway said that the company has no plans to integrate its search engine into Vista, the new Microsoft Windows operating system set to replace Windows XP later this year or early next year
I tend to think they should integrate it. I would love to have a text entry box along the task bar where I can enter a search term and then have the results pop up in IE. Integrating it would make it easier to search locally too.
Eventually they will have targeted ads on everyone's desktop, which they will (hopefully) use to subsidize the cost of their OS.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
Apperently they are releasing a console better than sony's as well. Someone please fire these marketing people ... we are all tired of this "better than" BS when there is no product on the shelve/www etc ...
what I have been saying for years:
Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe
Blair has been so far up to Bush's ass these last couple of years that Britain is no longer a part of Europe.
Originally Google was great. Since floating, their focus has changed to pumping out half-arsed "is it innovation if we add our logo?" products that are fun for a minute and then fairly irrelevant.
.. to the point where there's a new "BIG THANG" every other week it seems .. only opens the door to their competitors.
Diversifying so much
Righty
1. 6months is a awful long time, infact its so long, that any project which is destined to be released in 6months almost surely wont be, or it will infact change its aims so that it becomes something other than what it was meant to be.
2. Who says google will be around in 6months? Again alot can happen.
3. They sound so sure of them selfs, that its almost like the product exists now, but they aren't releasing it for 6 months, so that means all the other developers have 6months to make theirs better.
4. Google constantly evolves and in 6months they might not care (nor need to care) about searching anymore. In 6months they may of realeased the google O/S with its almighty power.
5. 5 never existed, it was 6months out of date
6. Slashdot might not be here in 6months, so we may never get the news of this new release, and so we shall stop evolving...
Yes im a google fan boi, and a ms hater and i admit it, but that isn't why i've written this. Anyone whos studied infomation systems, or worked with any kind of technology can tell you how deadlines dont mean shit because if the product isn't ready, it wont be released.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
This coming from the world's leading operating software maker, whose main product is so full of security holes, it's gotta new virus to exploit those holes on an hourly basis. Yeah, that's the kind of reliability and results *I* want.
Should that be Balmers job? Balmer would would have done it but then he realized he was sitting in a chair and well... you know how he gets about google when chairs are around... Sure enough 5 minutes into the interview he was running around the room screaming like a 4 year old with half the chairs in the room smashed. I heard the reporter quit his job afterword claiming he'd never have to work again.
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
No comment.
I was just about to search Google for a replacement perpetual motion machine, and also to look up the density of dilithium. Now I shall wait 6 months.
It wouldn't be the search engine that was going to beat Google in July '04 or November '04, would it? Or was it going to be the one that would soon be as well-known as Google two and a half years ago? Or maybe it won't be the search engine obviously colored by search results in '03?
I have no problems if Google sweats a little, because that sort of competition is good. But Microsoft's got a lot more to do than ante up Yet Another Search engine and expect it to be worshipped the way Google's is.
Once upon a time, Microsoft's crappy Windows 386 was in danger of getting killed by OS/2. So they announced Windows NT - the killer ap that would be so much better than OS/2 it would be worthwhile hanging on to your DOS-based box until it was delivered.
Eventually - ten years late - Windows NT somewhere near met its promise. Was it a failure? Of course not - even as vapourware it killed OS/2.
They claim they have the best operating system now, and I honest think they believe it...
...claimed the world's best operating system for twenty-something years? Nothing ever came out of that, either.
What do you bet the the next version of IE will default to the MS search page and the preference to set it will mysteriously disappear or be buried in some obscure registry setting....
Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months
So, in six months Microsoft claims to be better than what Google is today. Do they expect Google to be sleeping in the meantime?
...Microsoft will be releasing a new version of windows which is better than OS X, soon.
Duke Nukem will be out soon, too, and if you order before the end of the month, it will be delivered in a flying car.
Find funky gifts
Microsoft has been showing the signs of being able to build a search engine to rival Google for some time now.
* Bright people working for them
* msnbot has been crawling as much as googlebot for well over a year
Put those two together: a good source of data and a bunch a bright people and you should be able to build a great search engine.
You've forgotten the (not so ) secret ingredient, that only Google bother implementing. On the internet, competition is massive. Every other site is only one click away. This means, if you want to suceed, the customer comes first.
Google make money because they give you a service, and you don't even realise they're trying to make money off you. Yahoo and MSN make less money because when you go to their homepages, you get spammed with advertisments and services, instead of just being able to search.
It doesn't matter how good the next MSN search is. If they decide to degrade the service in favour of trying to make more money, users will flee to another provider. It's that simple.
Go to MSN search right now. It's clear whoever is in charge needs to be fired. I can't get a search without first selecting where I want to search in an irritating popup menu. It's substandard. Users flock to better offerings.
Yahoo are better by comparision, but again, when I go to their main page, again, they too drop the ball.
Google still haven't lost the plot. You go to Google, and you get search. No mess, no fuss, no distractions, just the results. The sponsored links in no way distract you from the main goal. Google want you to be happy with the service, because the more happy people they get, the more happy people will use their other services.
That's how you make money on the internet. You please the customer. If you're shoving ads down peoples throats or bugging them to upgrade, or basically in any way throwing up and artifical barrier, you're wasting your time.
If you read the Penny Arcade Bacon Robot's book, Tycho really hits the nail on the head. If you're just sitting in front of the internet with your arms crossed, waiting for people to give you money, you're not going to get a dime. Pay per view content might as well not exist, and sites that push products and services on their users are basically just line noise.
If Microsoft, or anyone wants to succeed on the internet, they have to realise this; On the net, nice guys finish first.
May the Maths Be with you!
Yeah sure.
As they have the best OS and the best AIM and the best DB-Software and so forth. Microsofts Marketing as Marketing can, who is surprised?
Ice
Sig? Where I go, I don't need
...and Uwe Boll is promising that Dungeon Siege will "be better than Lord of the Rings". I'll wait until I see it.
If only Microsoft could keep a lid on something. They overhype all upcoming products to the point of coming under such scrutiny upon release that they have no hope but to dim compared to expectations. They might as well call this search engine Daikatana (for those who don't know, this was a long-hyped game that failed miserably due to expectations, as well as the fact that it kinda sucked). Google is great about preparing a product, quietly releasing it thru a link on their search engine and letting the users determine whether it's good or not. If it's great, it gets tons of exposure and word of mouth, but if it sucks, it quietly dies and few folks hear about it.
Here's Microsoft compared to a real-life scenario:
Friend: "Check it out man, the hottest chick you've ever seen is about to come around the corner"
Me: "Sweet"
*Eagerly Waits*
*Girl walks by*
Me: "Yea, she's alright"
(And if she's ugly, I'll always remember my friend thinking that bowser was a hottie)
Now here's how Google does that same scenario:
Friend: "Hey man, since I'm letting you borrow my Lexus, could you drop my friend off at their house just up the road?"
Me: "Sure!"
*Hot girl gets in car*
*Schwing!*
(And even if she isn't hot, I won't remember her 5 minutes after I drop her off)
For Microsoft "More Ubiquitous" == "Better". Just as with a hundred other technologies they've unfairly leveraged their existing OS monopoly to spread, they will integrate their search engine fully into Vista (probably with some sort of "It's part of the OS, we can't remove it" claim) and they will be more relevent to the US marketplace at that point. That is unless the government steps in and smacks them down for re-committing the same crime they've already been convicted of...
...Yeah, I couldn't write that last sentence without laughing either. They'll get away with it. They always do.
-Tom
I am thinking that with Vista with desktop searching the default search engine will be MSN.
Sorta figures really. Microsoft did it with IE and set the default page to MSN. They didn't get in trouble for that.
So everyone as they start picking up the desktop search stuff will be using that as well for internet searches, if they can get their shit together, there is no reason why they couldn't get a large portion of the market back from the Vista OS base.
If they start feeding part of the data from the desktop search engine back into MSN it will become more powerful in that it can start doing more personalised searches, hopefully making your viewing habits (From search engines) more relevant to you.
The only problem will be whether Google or anyone else gets a look in, or whether the user will be locked into the MS desktop search. If this is the case, then I think MS could well have another case on their hands. The problem with anti-trust cases in this instance is that after the product is shipped the damage is already done (Cutting off air supply anyone?)
Berny
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe...
Okay, so first Britain, then Europe. Okay, got it.In six months i will take over the world and delay vista six more months
Well, Microsoft certainly may surprise us all and make a search engine better than Google. But how popular would it be anyway? Most people find more than enough results with Google now. And of course, Google is evolving all the time, too, so the results are probably getting better and better. Not too many people are anti-Google, yet there are many anti-Microsoft people in the world. Then there's the fact that Google has become the de facto search engine. This is quite apparent, since "googling" has become a common word for "searching from the Internet". This is quite a challenge for Microsoft.
I'm sure you still use Windows.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Duke Nukem Forever ships, until then it's just more vapourware and "real soon now" FUD from the masters
i seem to remember something called avalanche that was supposed to smoke bit torrent. like TWICE AS GOOD...
i don't care
Relevant in the marketplace != best
First the U.S., then U.K., then the rest of Europe...
Now, if they had a better search engine in China, then that'd be news. Y'know, like one that actually produced something other than vacation photos when you typed in Tian'anmen Square.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
There's no point wasting time Googling. I'm going to save up all my searches and get all the information I need in Fall! I just hope it's not a bait-and-switch and I end up disappointed -- but I know MS wouldn't do that to me!
:-)
They've done me a great service by announcing this now. MS is so helpful!
Why don't they just do it .. instead of announcing it 6 months in advance and having it suck ass in the end? Either that or be specific as to how it'll be better.
.. the point is M$FT's policy of announcing products and then having them turn out to be lame is probably a point for the anti-trusters due to it being a deliberate move to undercut a competitor under false pretenses. Funny thing is i dont agree with the bundling or even OEM stuff being so bad .. or i think AAPL did worse with the whole refusing to allow third parties to play fairplay drm'd songs.
This seems more a ploy to "fucking kill google"'s stock price and force them to go into some sort of scramble panic and take risks. I'm sure that they're working on some crap they think can rival google. But from what I've seen of live.com and start.com. They have no idea how to make an easy to use navigatable interface. I of course even did them the courtesy of suggested improvements and well I dunno if they're just gonna throw the suggestions in the trash. Just go to live.com and u'll see.
Anyway
That's fantastic! It's hard to have the world's best anything, but Microsoft is actually going to pull it off! I for one and exploding with anticipation!
Alta Vista :-)
Yep, still smells like VAPORWARE.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
What happened to that? Or is this a kinder gentler MS?
-- Boycott Shell
All MS has to do to wipe Google off the map is make sure all new OEM sales of MS-Windows point their searches only to MS own excuse for a search service. Or make sure that one of the payloads snuck into a "security" update does so. Something over 75% of people just leave the default install. Even if they don't leave the defaults, every time support bleats the "re-format, re-install" mantra they get rid of all those customizations. Eventually they disappear through attrition.
Illegal tying helped them out with MSIE vs Netscape. Netscape had the market, but MSIE came pre-installed on all Wintel hardware and all W95 CDs. Don't take my word for it. Look up US DOJ vs MS. Both products rather sucked.
Illegal tying helped them out in getting WMA/WMV and its DRM a serious share in a market where a few years ago they had none. Don't take my word for it. Look up the case of MS vs the EC, which MS is still footdragging on.
And to a certain extent, illegal tying helped them out in getting MS-Word and MS-Excel to take the place of WordPerfect and Quattro. Heck that was probably the whole reasong for bundling everything into MS-Office in the first place.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
is if: :)
1.They have ads that are as unobtrusive as google adwords.
2.They can gaurantee me that the search results are 100% free from any attempts by unscruplous page owners to boost their results using underhanded tricks (cf the recent BMW case)
3.They can gaurantee me that their search results are 100% accurate and that no-one has paid Microsoft any money to get higher results
4.They can gaurantee me that they wont sell any info they collect to nasty people (spammers etc)
and 5.They can come up with cool logos for special days and events like Christmas and the Winter Olympics
Until then, I will stick with Google (who fit all those criteria)
- XP is the most secure os we've ever fielded
- Vista will be the most secure os we've ever fielded
and now
- Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months
Uh-huh. *snicker*
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Linux and Mac related pages have become harder and harder to find.
The question is, on equal footing, even with an engine as strong as google, will people switch to MS ?
If the MS engine is better, will people switch ? My response is that it had better be DAMN good because its gonna take me a lot to more to make me encourage microsoft, the very same company with almost an absolute monopoly on the desktop market and also the very same company who thinks its right to charge me 500$ for their windows software...that cannot even guarantee stability at that price.
I'm not saying I'll stay with google forever but ms had better start delivering more and talk less.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
lets be frank here.. .simple
:D
microsoft goons say something
microsoft followers follow and believe and fork out their hard earned money blindly
the google guys stated out in a basement
where did bill gates start out at? having a rich lawyer as a father, teaching the golden rules
-lie
-cheat
-steal
your way into humans hearts
... I remember helping her with a campaign that tried to position "MSN me!" as a catchphrase to replace "IM me!" Since I'm on a lovely Mac and use iChat, I usually suggest someone "IM" or "instant message" me - even when I'm using the MSN client. And no, I don't suggest people "iChat" me ;-)
They'd actually have a chance at this if they are using Linux or BSD on the servers for their search engine.
#!/
Um...how about you wait until your product is on the market and its users can decide which is better before you go making statements like this?
But aside from that, even if it is MS, I'm glad there is heavy competition here because in the end, the people who really benefit are the users...and Google has been resting on its laurels as of late.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Searching for "paris harrington theorem"
Google and yahoo gives decent results. (The top three are the same: mathworld, wikipedia, citeseer to the paper by paris and harrington)
msn barfs:
"
We couldn't find any results containing lb-blackcar.com/webride/asp/dispatcher.asp. Consider: lb black cat webgrade asp dispatchers
"
very informative I would say.
What surprised me is how good yahoo's results have become. If I were looking for a google replacement, I would look at yahoo first.
What they are not saying is that Vista's version of Internet Exploder will not only have MSN as the default start page, it will have M$earch as the default search engine.
Domination by obfuscation.
aloh,
dave
I wonder if they are going to have built-in searching within Vista, local and internet-based searching. This would leverage them the ability to basically map every file on every machine running Vista, just like GoogleDesktop, and then be able to search remote computers for specific files or words within the files.
I forsee a very large peer-to-peer network built from these file databases combined with some extra network code to allow for transferring.
If not, hey, someone do it real fast in open source before it gets patented. Use the new bittorrent code and encrypt the data.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
He said that Microsoft's goal -- but not its initial offering -- would go beyond finding URLs and instead focus in on the specific information sought by Internet users.
What the heck is a search engine finding, if it isn't finding URLs? Maybe technology has taken a leap I missed, but I expect a search engine to find the address of my local pizza shop on the interweb (yeah, that's a URL), not deliver the pizza.
Oh Microsoft, such tall stories.
pigs will fly out of my ass!
I lost my sig...
Bush claims democracy in Irak soon.
We're sorry... this story is not currently available
Here is one site that talks more in detail about it. link
Similarly, in the MS web maps interface, searching for an address (or even a city) gives lots of advertisements which rather intrusively pop up on the map itself. Google just gives me the map.
1: Game search results and charge companies to make them appear first.
2: Make ads for Microsoft Products, come up 1st, appear slightly larger etc.
3: Use flash ads and or other distractions.
4: Cram as many ads in as possible, making stealth links that seem like answers but really always take you some service that is paying MS. Ala http://www.experts-exchange.com/
5: Use their bundled search engine that Vista will assuredly be hard coded to use, to apply pressure on companies who have paid for #1 to only work with Windows, or in the case of tech journals, promote MS FUD, Maket MS Crap, do their dirty work.
It's in their DNA , it starts with the view that the unwashed masses are all below them and are only good for getting money from.
A pig will reach an altitude higher than any other unaided flyer in six months time, said a pig spokesporker on Wednesday. "What we're saying is that in six months' time, pigs will be flying higher than all other animals, including birds", said Porky Pig, pig president for life. That timing would more or less coincide with the release of Duke Nuke'em Forever.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
And MS could have had tabs in IE by now, and could have integrated RSS, and could have had Aero (their equivalent to Apple's 3-year-old Quartz), and could have had desktop search (their equivalend to Apple's 2-year-old Spotlight) and could have had popular MP3 players and a reasonable purchased MP3 business model (their equivalent to... forget it). But they haven't. It's always been the NEXT Big Thing. Just six months away.
Sure, this six months away looks much more likely THIS time around. (It has to be.) But the targets they must meet are moving too. Vista would've blown away (technically, at least) MacOS X... three years ago. But MacOS X is a moving target, which be at version 5.0 around the time MS releases Vista 1.0. Same with Google: they're a moving target and they have at least 6 months to build on what they've been delivering, while MS is still prepping to deliver v 1.0.
How about waiting until MS actually (and finally) delivers and compare it to the state of the art at THAT point in time, instead of comparing MS's future plans (with an established track record of not delivering) versus last year's competition?
BTW, MS was hiring "the best and brightest", WAY before Google came along and started sucking them up. And they've delivered absolutely nothing equivalent to what much smaller companies (Apple, Google) have been delivering on an ongoing basis. It's not simply a matter of having smart people, it's having a culture that allows them to do cool things instead of forcing them to try to leverage and extend a monopoly, to preempt the competition, and to Invent Everything Here. MS's problem is that they sink a huge number of IQ points into politics, not better products.
I certainly remember Altavista, as for a long time, it was practically the only search engine I ever used. I bookmarked it as the start page on quite a few other people's browsers too.
I think the difference, this time, will be - Google still works extremely well, with no signs of the company resting on its laurels. I kept using Altavista out of habit long after new alternatives emerged, but I only quit when it became obvious they weren't really competitive anymore. The last thing I recall coming out of Altavista was a push to resell the engine as something you could run locally on a LAN/WAN network to index your own Intranets. In hindsight, they probably wasted their time trying to do that at a point when they needed to focus on keeping up with what the competition was offering instead.
'and this too shall pass away.'
And the original context was, roughly:
"An eastern king once asked his wise men to come up with a phrase to etch on a piece of stone which would be true for all time, and after some time they replied 'and this too shall pass away.' "
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Iraq footage (for US consumers only) just like Google does?
n sors_us_video/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/27/google_ce
Google's strength is in their good search engine, in
their brand and also in their set of very good web-based
applications.
Very good as in very standard compliant and compatible
with any browser, to the point that somebody starts
saying it will be less and less relevant which particular
OS people use.
How can Microsoft beat Google in this area without
stepping on its own feet?
Anyway until the vapourware condenses into something real
there's not much to comment on...
Andrea
The difference becomes more and more visible:
Apple: "Available today"
M$: "Real soon now. No, really! We're serious this time, not like last, or, uh, the one before..."
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
he's like saying that google is much more better than msn search (as of now..) so meaning, msn search's conceding defeat from google...
And in other news, Microsoft hostile takeover of Google, film at 11....
Sure, they're gonna displace the brand name that's actually a documented synonym for "search the internet". Just like how they took over AOL and Yahoo from instant messenger.
stuff |
The firefox google plugin lets you filter sites from your google search. I downloaded it originally for experts exchange but my filter list is slowly growing as I add other spammy sites to it as well. It's great for not accidentally clicking on those turds that always seem to pop up whenever you're doing technical queries.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And in other news, Microsoft claims world's best operating system... soon!, and Microsoft claims world's best toilet paper... soon!
When Mr. Gates was asked how "soon", he replied that he was waiting on approval of his patents on the Word Explorer, a web-based dictionary/thesaurus, and the Recyclable User's Manual, about which Mr. Gates says, "it's cushiony soft...", as well as his copyright of the word "best"; which has been re-defined as "excrement".
"Put your message in a modem, and throw it into the cyber-sea." - Rush
Mod the parent post up... (I was going to point out the same thing: it seems a lot of people forgot the Microsoft announcement along similiar lines when MSN Search beta came out, and it wasn't very well-received, so what, they are proposing to make MSN Search into what they had originally promised it to be in 6 months time?)
IBM used to pull that shit too, and got dinged for it by the DOJ as part of the IBM antitrust investigation. For a long time, they were not allowed to talk about new products until the products were actually released. They took that agreement very seriously, too. I was kind of hoping that the same thing would be done to Microsoft as part of their antitrust settlement but it seems like the DOJ missed that part of their monopolistic behavior.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google,"
That statement alone, if true, shows the search engine is doomed. People want information, they want a search information that caters to _their_ needs. They don't want the trash that marketeers want to show them.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I think this is coded speech for "steering more ignorant consumers to advertisers."
MS is almost never about building a quality product That Just Works first, and then making money off of the quality. They always put Making A Buck first and quality someplace after that. Google seems to be largley the opposite -- that make a quality product people want to use, then figure out how to make money off it.
While I don't doubt that there are bright people working on MS search engine, their desire to produce a good search will always get subliminated to the business managers profit quotas.
They've been claiming the world's best operating system for years.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
"Should we add a Google-like search engine but twice as good hard-core into Windows? Guess what. If we did that, I don't think a company called Google would be very happy," he said.
What the heck is "twice as good hard-core" anyway?? This is from the Microsoft European President.
Will it eleminate Blobs er... blogs from my life?
If not then it's just another BOF (blob of info);
I hate to read two, three, or more paragraphs of "blah blah balh" just to get a quote of another "Blog/Blah Blah Blah" that may be the source of the info.
It's time for google to give a -blog option that works.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Yeah, but Google was revolutionary. For once, almost all searches returned relevant results on the very first search. It was so good, that a lot of the time you could get away with hitting the "I'm feeling lucky" button. If Altavista had an "I'm feeling lucky" button, it would have taken you to total crap most of the time.
What is MS(N) going to do that is revolutionary, considering that the relevancy of Google's results is close enough to perfection that any improvement would only seem marginal? Altavista's relevancy left a lot to be desired, Google's doesn't.
It's possible that MS(N) will come up with something, but it had better be more than a search engine "as good as Google plus the chance to win prizes".
In vista (in IE7, actually), everytime you enter a url in the browser, the browser sends the url to microsoft to know if the url is safe or not
This is sold as a "phising protection" - microsoft has a list of "bad" sites and the browser will know when you're being a victim of phising.
On the other hand, this is also a useful trick to know what pages are visiting the 90% of the world population, a really interesting data source for a search engine.
Microsoft's marketing department has historically been light-years ahead of their actual products. Anyone aware of any reason why this might be different?
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe
Last time I checked, Britain was still in Europe. Did Microsoft's search engine tell them different?
Stachel
One year from today, you will goto search the web via MSN for "Linux" and you will get prompted "Before we return the results to you, we will need to verify that the copy of Windows you are running is Genuine Microsoft - click OK to install this ActiveX component"
Ugh! So you submit. Refresh the page. Now you get the automatic "Windows Service Upgrades" that flood your bandwidth for 2 hours making your internet connection unusable. So you submit and wait.
Several hours later, and several reboots, you return to searching for "Linux". This time you get prompted to "sign in with MS Passport to ensure your privacy and security of results". You submit and comply, and click through. OOps, you'll need another round of automatic Windows Security Update Emergencies. Wait. Reboot.
Ah finally. Refresh the web page, get the results, but the page contains a new "WVA" [Windows Vista Animation] embedded advertisement. IE7.3 automatically steps in and downloads Windows Media Master 13.666, which requires your Passport, and another set of "Security Updates".... WindowsMediaMaster13 includes a new set of DRMs that actually prevent you from installing ANY applications that would alter your machine's security state, and thus save those precious 99cent MP3 downloads. The side-effect will be to prevent you from ever installing Linux on that HardDrive. Period.
Submit. Wait. Get your answers. "Where do you want to go today?"
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
He doesn't even know that US is not in europe / middle east / africa
Microsoft does not depend on a steady advertising revenue stream. As a result, it could create a search engine which was not at the mercy of unscrupulous advertisers - insisting, for instance, that any advertiser responding to a search term could actually defend it. (Give users a bounty for detecting false returns and make the advertisers pay - a kind of Advertising Standards Authority but with actual teeth.)
I doubt it will happen, but I personally would be prepared to pay for access to a search engine that didn't produce spam adverts, even if, and this is a big concession, it was part of a generalised MS tax.
Pining for the fjords
Sure. And "Two years from now, spam will be solved
1) For no rational reason, many people will think it's a better engine and use it
2) Strange, foggy tricks will push almost any other people to the ms-search engine
3) Everyone is getting trouble finding the right information on the web
4) Only geeks will remember Google and how good it was
5) Sysadmins will be spending 73% of their time doing searches using google for office-folks who can't find what their looking for
Trust me, I work for the government.
Microsoft claims a lot of things.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I think Google's approach is working. OTOH, I know that MS Research has been focusing a lot of effort on search technologies (they gave a talk about their work at my workplace, the MIT CS & AI Lab, recently) so it will be interesting to see if their new search engine raises the bar.
noah
Microsoft has to have something pritty damn good to make me want to switch my habits.
Yes, it's called an updated C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file:
64.215.169.95 google.com
This is a non-story
-FL
Not a MSFT fan.. but I have noticed that I am getting a lot more referral traffic from MSN than Google..for my site... http://www.pedsdoc.com/
Everyone seems to be flaming MS for the hype & announcements, the "stop talking and start shipping" sentiment is everywhere. Folks, this wasn't an announcement. It was a comment by one executive (whom, you might note, isn't responsible for search technology R&D).
Microsoft Licenses Military Shark Technology to Steer Users to Search Engine...
My favorite search engines, through the ages:
- Archie
- Veronica
- WebCrawler
- Alta Vista
- HotBot
- Google
There will be others, though hopefully not MSN!Spit out that Kool-Aid, it's poisoned.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
It takes 6 months to data-mine and cache all of google's data.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I see google starting to slip in peoples minds as being "neutral or safe" as they grow bigger. Nobody trusts MS though.. I dought many google users will feel inclined to use MS even if it is a little better. -Just to much nonsense with MS... and comeon.. picture a microsoft site not covered with ads.. ha I would rather go back to altavista than have MS pawing over my search records..
Kill your TV
Quit trolling. You know very well that the screen for a system crash in XP is red and that the system doesn't wait for you but reboots instead. So, yeah, technically you *could* say that you don't *see* the BSOD in XP and later, but that's just tryiing to bullshit your way out of admitting the crashes.
With AltaVista I waded through pages and pages of results trying to find what I was looking for. Even from the begining I found relevant results near the top of Google. Also I seem to remember that back in the 14.4 dialup days Google's pages loaded faster.
:)
Last, Altavista just didn't seem to understand the value of a simple web address. For the longest time you had to go to http://www.altavista.digital.com/ and they didn't even own altavista.com. I never knew about av.com until this thread.
I still use bablefish though.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Hopefully, readers of Slashdot will realize that a real discussion on an issue like this is impossible, because there's no way to prevent Microsoft or Google employees from coming here and posting. How do we know all these pro-Microsoft messages aren't written by somebody in Microsoft's marketing department?
I think that's one of the biggest issues that's never discussed... so many people read this site, and their opinions are shaped by what they read, because they automatically assume they're reading posts from other people just like themselves.
Will their browser be better than google's?!
a nd-cz_km_0301autofacescan09.html
http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/01/gates-google-pol
And, along the same lines, is this guy a sublime master as slinging disinformation, or is he a dowdy old codger who thinks he understands technology? Did something get lost in the translation here?
Before developing in VS.NET though, I would get the same kind of awesome results searching using Windows search, for files containing text. I was sure there were files containing the text I was looking for, but Win+F turned up no results. I've since tried out some little program called Effective File Search, which worked much better.
I'd love it if MS put their money where their mouth is and actually turned something good out, but Google spanks them in search quality, as far as I'm concerned.
I am Leviathant and I approve this message.
this is slashdot after all.
Your argument might make some sense if their biggest competitor wasn't also an american company. The problem with Microsoft search is that they don't pick up on new net trends quickly enough, they manipulate search results for their own ends, and they're basically the untrustworthy default that people move away from when they learn what else is out there.
They'd better build a fsck-ing searchengine to find the numerous bugs in their shitware.
(I expect to be rewarded with a 'Flame -1', but I don't care, coz I know I'm right)
Damnit Jim, I'm [root@localhost w00t]#, not an AD-Adminstrator(tm) !
moogle.com
I'd like a search engine I could toggle between all results, and then be able to filter out all commercial results in the actual "search" main column. I don't have a problem with the text ads on the side so they could leave those, I understand they need to make a buck for providing the service. I guess originally that was what the .net and .com and .org domains were supposed to do, but that is long gone.
I was trying and trying to select the middle 4 letters of the word "Saturday" and then lo and behold pops up Clippy!
This reminds me of a Cathy cartoon I said a number of years ago. She's hanging out at a bar with a friend and tells her "sometimes I just want to hang a sign around my neck that says 'Wait, I'm just about to lose 10 pounds!' "
And then they see a guy walk buy with a sign around his neck that says "Soon I'll have the body of Arnold Schwartzeneger", and they have a good laugh.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
And Oasis was going to be bigger than the Beatles.
Cheers.
How many organizations could code and maintain a system as big as the Googleplex? Google has accomplished some amazing but underreported things in the field of distributed systems.
Microsoft has their experience with MSN Search and with sites like Hotmail to build on, but building a Google competitor could still challenge them.
until msft gets google groups away from google, i will be googling to find msn.com. that assumes i will need to visit msn.com at some point.
one of the first things i do, when helping people with broken windows, is get them off of msie (rename it to "do not use ie"), along with its default msn home page, and set up firefox with the default firefox/google home page.
why announce this in advance? b/c microsoft, at its core, is a petty company run by petty, jealous people, and they can't stand being one upped by google - so this is their turn to lash out and try and threaten the people that run google.
the irony here is that this pettiness and jealously is totally irrational.
i guess success and riches don't necessarily make one rational. or nice. or even a decent person.
A similar case is with Xerox; in my area, people say 'to xerox' and that means 'to make a copy', even though the copy machine that does the job is most likely to be a Canon, or some other non-Xerox brand.
Also, a lot of people say 'memory stick', while they refer to a usual USB flash drive.
Is Xerox the leader of copy-machines? Is Sony the leader of the flash-memory market? Even if 'to google' sticks to our vocabulary for the next couple of years, it doesn't mean that all our bases will belong to them until the universe will cease to exist.
The saddest poem
Google's searches have always been more relevant and better than anyone elses', and it is a very hard thing to do. The notion that MSN will have something better in six months is well wide of the mark. Nice try.
Well, that clinches it for me! I'm dumping Google now.
And, oh yeah, where can I buy this "Vaporware" product I keep hearing about?
1. Make some hyperbpolic prediction
2. Rig the market and/or stats to make it appear *true* (the Petstore application anyone?)
3. All the MS trolls and marketoons go 'round saying it's true
4. Yet more monopoly profit!!!!
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Someone please tell Mr. Gates to run for political office - or not.
Page rank has less to do with "popularity and usefulness" than with the interrelationship between pages. For instance, Google assumes that pages that are frequently linked to from other pages are "better" than pages that are linked to from fewer pages. This is why link farms work.
I'd be willing to tell Google if I found a page useful if that feedback would be used to rank "useful" pages higher. At this point, my Google searches return about 1/3 aggregators (link farms) and about 1/3 other "optimized" crud. Essentially forcing me to manually "search" the search results. Which wasn't the case a few years ago. The usefulness of Google (which is still better than other engines) has declined as its popularity has increased.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I swear I see MS on my web logs at least 3 times a day and its just a tiny little forum.
It's called vaporware. It's the main weapon Microsoft uses to destroy smaller companies with superior technology. All Microsoft has to do is to be aware of another product that they perceive as threatening their bottom line, and the first (and cheapest, and most effective, and usually only) thing they do is to announce that they're coming out with the same, but better, product in, say, six months. The Microsoft faithful (about 99% of the world) hear the prophetic words, and don't buy the new product while they wait for Microsoft to come out with their version, thereby making the usurper go out of business. Then n months later, no new Microsoft product, but by then it's a moot point since the usurper has been vanquished; besides, everybody's forgotten the promised software anyway.
Did I miss anything?
yes, winxp does have some level of usability over linux. the amount is arguable, though. some might even contest the idea, but i know what you mean.
however, msft doesn't compete based on their "improved usability."
they know that would be a loser's game.
they compete by
1. getting as many new pcs preloaded with their stuff.
2. they make deals thateffectively penalize pc sellers for selling stuff w/o their their stuff (they often pay for win license even with computer that that has no os!).
they aren't dumb.
usability is minimal is compared to the grip and control they exercise on the oems.
you mention 10% of the issue. i just mentioned the 90% you left out.
Like people will really use a Microsoft search engine knowing that every thing they type in goes into 50 different MS user personal info collector databases (Google does this too, but, they are sneakier about it, MS just flaunts their ability to get away with everything in our faces and collects all they want and gives away all they want while Google has to give away a lot less to get away with it.) Besides, MS stands for everything Google does not. Eg, bloat and uber-pretty etch-a-sketch interfaces designed to be so user friendly they are user unfriendly to any user with an IQ above 35. Whereas if you type in Google.com, it pops up very nearly instantly even on dialup, understands that simpler is better, if you run a search, the results pop up nearly instantly, and so on. MS can maybe come up with a better search algorithm, they can maybe parse things better so you get better results, but, the site will be so pretty you can't take it and so slow that even high end DSL users get to remember all over again what it felt like to be on dialup. Frankly, whenever I try to search for anything on Microsoft's site, it takes me 5x longer than it should to find it, so I really doubt they'll come up with better methods for searching.
... I don't care what those stuffy conservative types think, the younger you tell them about search engines, the better. My boy is 3, and we just had the first of many talks on the subject.
People don't seem to recall what search was really like before Google. There were two major problems: first, searches tended to return results based on word frequency, which made the search engines susceptible to simple gaming and gave lots of results that were completely irrelevant to your query (in fact, the least relevant results seemed to be first in most search results). Second, major search engines started taking money in exchange for search placement, which only exacerbated the first problem.
Shortly after Alta-Vista started taking bribes to screw up their otherwise very good search results, that Google came on the scene. Not only did Google have a revolutionary method of ranking pages, but they weren't taking bribes and any rube could tell the difference in the results. On top of this, Google presented a stripped-down search interface that removed all the distractions that had accumulated at the other search sites.
Even now, when Google has started taking payment to place ads on result pages, they still segregate ads from search results, and the search results are unaffected by the paid placement ads. It is this basic ethic that keeps Google popular, all other nonesense aside. Unless Microsoft is willing to remain completely unbiased in the presentation of search results, they will not be able to deliver a search engine better than, or even as good as, Google.
While Microsoft can probably resist the temptation to skew search results for money from outside sources (pay for placement), I don't believe that they can resist internal pressure to skew results in favor of Microsoft products or against Microsoft competitors. Their history as a company argues strongly that they will take evey advantage they can get, even at the expense of a single product (they have introduced bugs into their operating systems to put competitors at a disadvantage, they introduce blatant incompatabilities into their web browser to damage their competition, they cripple thier own products on competing platforms in order to strengthen the position of their own platform). I see no reason to believe that MSN Search is going to be any different.
They may be able to use their monopoly position to put MSN Search in front of most people's eyeballs, and that should guarantee that MSN Search is, at least, the second most popular search engine on the planet, but search is such a quality-dependant function (that is to say, people are very sensitive to the quality of the returned search results, much more sensitive than they are to the quality of output from a word processor or spreadsheet) that even a slight difference in quality is likely to result in an overwhelming advantage in the market.
So long as Google is willing to keep their hands off the search results (as they have, mostly, proven they are willing to do) and Microsoft is not, Google is likely to hold the lead in the search-race.
just a ghost in the machine.
bollocks. well written original content, marked up semantically, and such that content is seperate from presentation, will *allways* rank reasonably well. hands down. aditionally, the #1 main indicator for google page rank is other sites that link to yours. if your content is good, people will link to it, and it will do well on google.
"SEO" is a bunch of horsepoop, agreed, but at the end of the day, quality content that others link to + correct semantic markup will allways rank quite well
Jam tomorrow.
The MAJORITY of users out there are STILL using M$IE. Hence, the application that has the most hits to Google is Microsoft's closed-source code M$IE. Microsoft owns the code, the desktop, and the key desktop applications (Word, Excel, (C) Microsoft in case I get in trouble). Hence they own the internal logic and control the "access" to the Internet. Much like AOL before them, they can become the "gatekeeper" to Joe SixPack's Internet experience (they now use their internal firewall and are bundling virus protection).
Own the majority of desktops, desktop applications, and desktop browsers, you can pretty much tie them together and "encourage" them to all use MSN search.... Using your monopoly in this manner is supposed to be illegal (aka a sick bird), but we know the history of DOJ versus M$. Aren't monopolies with really deep pockets great!
Recently I checked on my webserver logs and found out that, although my site is actually "out-of-order" due to my very own lazyness, the msnbot checks at least once sometimes multiple times per day my site, although there is actually no information to be found except an open letter to the world right now. Now, as I am paying for excessive traffic on this virtual server, it would actually be a kind of self-defense in order to reduce expected cost by exceeding the traffic limit, in that I would lead the msnbot into a honeypot from where it may never come out unless it terminates the connection. That said, how about showing them fudders who is really providing original content and who is really able to at least provide a decent search engine. I call upon you to program honeypots that will lead the msnbot and all the other bots from Microsoft into a neverending loop from where they will only escape if they themselves close the connection, with no information whatsoever being transmitted to Microsoft at all. This would, in case MS has approx. 10 bot servers running, lead to a stall in their information and content harvesting, for whatever purposes they have in mind. In my opinion they also use it for finding out about new developments on which they had never thought about in the first place. next, protecting your paid traffic and therefore your site from exceeding limits and by that forcedly going offline by this badly programmed bot which is not capable of deciding whether or not to look at a site, even if there have been no changes to the site in-between multiple visits of the bot. Personally I do not think that just excluding the msnbot from reading beyond robots.txt is the proper way to go, we have to shut them out and cause their bot to stall in exchange, by not finding any more available ports on their machine for outside world connections. What is your opinion to that? Are you in?
ask.com is a hell of alot cleaner now without that dumbass "jeeves" char.
the old "look" bothered me alot, for some reason the results page is a heck of alot smoother and the results are pretty damn good.
Since when does Slashdot post Microsoft press releases without even adding words like "supposedly" or "according to a Microsoft shill" etc.?
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
Disagree 100%. Spammer (and just plain agreeement between sites, and even sites by the same owner) interlinking is extremely common because of this very well known part of the algorithm.
Daily, I encounter original written content, that is ranked in double digit pages.
As a matter of fact, I rarely find the most relevant pages of a topic in the first page of Google.
Does it happen sometimes? Sure. If there are only 10 pages about a certain topic.
But when there are 1000+ pages dedicated to a certain subject, the optimized pages come up well before the non-optimized pages. Regardless of quality of content.
I will sometimes look up a specific property, and instead of finding that property's homepage, I see travel sites, trip reports, about.com blurbs, etc ... well before the official homepage of the property comes up. Sometimes the official site has Flash, PHP, or other things that apear to throw googlebot off. It seems antiquated. They still catalogue pages like it is 1998.
I welcome other, hopefully superior ranking algorithms. Especially ones that deal with more modern dynamic page concepts.
Get real, unless MS licenses patents from Google, how are they going to beat Google? If if google does license it, they make even more money, so beating google is a tall order.
I thought they ment, that their recent msn was better than google? At least they use to say so. Now they say that in 6 months, we will make msn better than google. To me that means, that even when msn now looks way better, even microsoft don't think it is better than google, so don't expect me to try it.
I've been feeling the same. It seems to me that it started about a year ago, maybe a little longer. I remember being able to find what I was looking for in the first page of 10 results. Now sometimes I can't find what I'm looking for at all.
"Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain...its European president said on Wednesday."
Note that the EUROPEAN president said that Microsoft will exceed Google in the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN. This is an absolutely brilliant office warfare strategy - claim your peers will deliver the impossible!
Next up:
'Microsoft will totally cure cancer within 6 months. In Europe, that is. In the U.S., not so much', its U.S. head said on Monday.
AltaVista used to be *the* search engine a long time ago. So you could go back a few years and ask the same question about Google.
...).
I don't know what planet you're from. AltaVista was never in the position that Google is now. I remember when Altavista was a big player -- as were several others at the time (Lycos, Yahoo, Webcrawler,
I never heard anybody say "just AltaVista it".
Ironic search results: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=linux+vs+wi ndows
The first few results are quite unbiased.
d ows
The first few results clearly favour Windows.
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=linux+vs+win
If Microsoft want their search to be more popular their results have to be unbiased to be taken seriously.
Just food for thought.
For what it's worth, I have been seeing two microsoft spiders crawling my website for every one google bot.
No matter what MS puts out, they're still behind the times. They're just playing catch-up to the search giant. Do they think Google is just sitting on its stacks of cash right now, content that they mastered the search market? Yeah right.
My prediction is that Google will once again revolutionize the software industry and MS will once again be blown away only to scramble to come back with something competetive 3 years later.
Sorry Bill, you lose.
I thought that was what the box at the right hand side of the Firefox toolbar was for. ;-)
.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Microsoft is never going to outdo Google if they can't help tampering with the results.
Top 5 results for "Linux" on Google:
Top 5 results for "Linux" on search.microsoft:
Top 5 results for "Open Office" on Google:
Top 5 results for "Open Office" on search.microsoft:
Now here's the kicker - top 5 results for linux on search.yahoo.com
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Guide to using Microsoft company.
MSN can't win the search war in its current form. MSN is not a search engine, it is a portal. Google is not a portal, it is a search engine. MSN can compete against Yahoo, another portal, but if it wants to win the search war it needs to ditch the content war and slash its MSN landing page into a minimalist design. That aint happening anytime soon, and, thus, this announcement is a bunch of balogna.
in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google
Wow, Microsoft is really setting its sights high!
(At the same time as they accidentally concede their current irrelevance?)
FUID?
FUID! FUID FUID-FUID !!!
FUID?!?
Microsoft FUID????
micro$oft fuid!!!!
FUID=FUID? FUID=/ ???
FUID?
Sorry, I don't speak corporate bullshit...
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
A couple years ago MicroSoft said the same thing.
And their search engine was crap. And its use has dropped even more over the
last couple years.
This is just more Vaporware and is pure advertizing FUD-idudness.
Okay. First, PHP is *not* an issue at all. PHP is handled by the server before googlebot sees anything. PHP doesn't exist to crawlers at all.
As for Flash, maybe you've got a point, but here's a question: How do you propose a robot deal with Flash? How does it tell the diference between a flash ad and actual content? Besides (and this is my own personal evangelism at work), Flash is inherently inaccessible (to people with disabilities, mobile/pda displays, etc.), and as far as I'm concerned, shouldn't be indexed by search engiens anyway, since they should help people find content that is usable to everyone.
If the two search engines are the same quality, I still will be uneasy to trust Microsoft with the data for my search profile.
The amount of hidden information, accumulated in search requests, that can be revealed by content analysis about a company or an individual is probably not well understood yet.
If I were let's say a Microsoft competitor, I would never use a Microsoft search engine.
If all search request data from a company is accumulated, stored and analyzed, who ever has this data, can have a clear picture about the company's goals, weaknesses, strategic planning, probably personal profiles of key people at the organization.
I am not sure that people want Microsoft to be the keeper and user of this data.
Whoever's search engine can retrun a good result for "windows vista crack" first
Google has a new generation of search technology coming out, which you can test out by going to http://66.249.93.104/. It's called Big Daddy, and it's supposed to be substantially better at filtering out the crap, among other things ... I'm not sure when it's scheduled to go live on google.com though.
Mar 1, 2006- "What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. marketplace than Google," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Sep 1, 2006- Google Bought By Microsoft
The search for the rest of the web is MSN search. And a search for [linux] at search.msn.com gets you:
1. The Linux Home Page at Linux Online
2. The Linux Kernel Archives
3. Linux.com: The Enterprise Linux Resource
4. Linux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
5. Red Hat | The Open Source Leader
Sounds like the problem was, "google got complacent"
I remember back in the day, when I was switching from webcrawler to yahoo because of result relevancy. Then it was "metacrawler" after which I just started using google directly.
My thought around the "metacrawler" switch was that no search engine can possibly return relevant results indefinately: the scum will eventually figure out the tricks and overwhelm through sheer numbers the good sites. I resigned myself to switching engines every so often.
I had much hope for google however, as when they were first starting to become popular, they made noises like they were going to change the algorithm every so often.
So it seems they have gotten complacent, or just too big to change. All the side projects may be having an unintended consequence as well. The sheer volume of irrelevant results indicates that the algorithm is not being changed drastically or often enough to achieve the desired outcomes.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Should make their site work with Firefox. Blasted ads.
Except that in this case, we're not going to hold off on our Web searching for six months in the vain hope that MS will eventually do a better job.
Searches are free, there's no commitment required, and you do them on a daily basis. When it comes to buying an expensive office automation package, e-mail system, or software development environment, you're looking at a decision that's made every couple of years and with more than a little concern over picking the wrong thing. In that context, the shiny brochureware product can compete for your attention.
Mind the Gap
How is this not an incredible invasion of privacy?
Microsoft gets press and then produces shit.
Why do I actually do most of my searches with the term wikipedia appended? I haven't moved my searches to wikipedia only because their search is slow. Of course, things can be better done than Google...
What possible reason would *any* company have of announcing that they are going to beat someone... in 6 months?
Don't they have the money to beat them now? Do they have to save their pennies?
If after all these years and all the resources they've thrown at trying to beat google they still can't do it, they never will.
But even if they can do it, why don't they just shut the hell up and do it? Then announce it. Flapping their mouths without something to show is the sort of thing that SCO do, and Infinium do.
Perhaps Microsoft, SCO and Infinium are the Unholy Trinity.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
2. Search had less value because far less important content was available (now virtually every company including towns, states, and nations have vital information available on the web).
3. The web was not a cultural hub for a vast segment of the computer literate population.
4. People from all walks of life were not asking, "Did you AltaVista that?"
It's a different situation. Google is not unshakable, but they are not going to disappear either. I think they play a prominent role in the economy for decades, much as IBM has and will continue to do.
And M$ is still a big monopolistic jerk that charges companies and individuals billions of dollars a year by flipping bits, throwing FUD, and withholding simple features to drive licensing revenue. They make their money by hiding what they do behind a wall of proprietary software and mountains of System and Method patents.
I don't say it is evil. I simply say that it was a successful model in the past when the internet was smaller, the general population less aware, and alternatives were fewer. But now better models are emerging and M$ can build as much additional crap with the old model as they like and still they will fail in the face of a more open service oriented company.
Example:
Whatever PR deceptions they may throw at us about how amazing Vista is, either the "innovations" in it are derivative crap, in which case I'm not interested, or they are legitimate innovations (very unlikely), in which case open competitors will bring competitive alternatives to market. Do you enjoy being forced to shell out money on new versions of software because of forced obsolecense? Just because M$ decides, "I'm the only OS in town for all practical purposes, so I just won't support XP, even though it still meets the needs of 95% of people and they don't want to spend a couple hundred dollars again for 'same shit, new wrapper'. I'll just use FUD to show that a lack of further support will lead to costly security vulnerabilities and say that customers will be losing out on incredible benefits that they never knew they needed."
Deep down, everyone hates that. Which is why people will keep googling, and the only people using MSN will be the ones that need to "belong" to the mythical M$ in whatever way they can, because they have that glassy eyed utterly blind fanaticism that allows them to rationalize things like, "My company just paid $30M because a simple feature is missing that requires me to buy twice as many software licenses for M$ SQL Server." But, oh. It's M$, so I guess it's worth it.
People aren't going to stop googling, because enough people are smart enough to not toss away the freedom that the few successful M$ competitors have afforded them.
There is a simple fix for this. Add the following lines to the /robots.txt file on your website:
User-agent: MSNBot
Disallow: /
In "The Pirates of Silicon Valley", wasn't it Bill Gates' character who said it doesn't matter if it's a better product? I think it's true because I personally don't feel like changing the interface I use. I like Google, MS would have to blow people away to draw them over.
nothing
is this because the new internet explorer released with vista redirects google.com to msn.com?
What is slashdot?
A few days ago I started my site. And was pleased to see the MSNBot picking it up hours after I submitted it. Google still hasn't show it's face (although I have submitted the site a few times). So they seem to be good at the more brute force approach. :-D
However, trying to get to my page in the results of search.msn.com I found that you can't go further then 25 pages (although they are listed!).
So, anything better then this broken interface should be easy
And just to show how confident they are of their search offering, they're staying away from their usual safe, blatant branding such as "MicrosoftSearch.com", and are going with the brand name "Microsoogle.com". ("Just a bit of whimsy, a silly word we thought of, no special reason; we could call it anything and the users will still love it", one Microsoft spokesperson said, when asked about the etymology.)
it's called http://www.metacrawler.com/ and I figure it will remain that way for many many moons ...
Cheers
Richard
Question Authority before IT questions You
"The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant,"
Dunno about you, but to me this sounds like they're giong to be force feeding paid ads to the consumer as search results... or this is the only time MS talks about "from a solution perspective" that they aren't trying to cram a new and not yet released or not yet working MS product down someone's throat as the answer to everyone's prayers.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
I needed that.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
"Spam Will Be 'Solved' In 2 Years."
"What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google."
"Windows has a lower TCO than Linux."
"Shaves closer than a blade."
Lies! All lies.
Given that Flash does nothing but obfuscate content, and I'm grateful to any search engine that will filter it out for me. About the first thing I'd do if I happened upon a Flash-only site is leave and find a civilized site anyway, so I'm happy to have that step skipped for me.
wtf - these need updated too.
/phplab/engines. Icon Name Last modified Size Description. [DIR] Parent ...
: www.2113.ch/phplab/engines/+phplab++/engines/&hl=e n&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
I doubt many can even get the scrolls to run anymore.
Index of
Directory - [TXT] 50megs.def 12-Mar-2002 16:20 541 [TXT] allthesites.def
www.2113.ch/phplab/engines/
cached
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:xy89n2Y77yEJ
microsoft is just doing this to tweak google. In the last couple weeks, GOOG has gotten pounded.
This is a strategic attack, because google is weak right now. Why not feed the doubters?
-An internal error has occurred while performing your search. Please contact Microsoft to inform about this problem- I prefer almost error-free beta versions rather than full of this kind of errors "final" versions.
The barrier to installing new software is significant. That's why MS could quash Netscape.
The barrier to using another website is not very significant. Unless Microsoft makes IE just not go to www.google.com or something along those lines, they can't do any monopoly leveraging -- they *have* to come up with a superior product.
I can't think of many things that Microsoft might be able to do here. MS does control the OS and your application software. Maybe it could build an initial profile on you based on scanning all the documents in your "My Documents" folder or something, but I don't know how else they could get much of an edge on Google. I guess they can provide faster/easier access to a search text filed -- maybe tapping the Windows button or something will bring up a "search" dialog that goes to MSN.
Possibly MS could provide better content-filtering than Google and then push for litigation requiring search engines to filter content to some degree that Google doesn't.
I still think that MS has a tough battle -- but I admit that there is nobody better in the industry at stabbing people in the back:
And, to my surprise, I was invited to a meeting in that conference room the next afternoon, where Bill Gates had somehow manifested, alone, surrounded by ten Apple employees. I think Steve wanted me there because I had evidence of Neil asking about the internals, but that never came up, so I was just a fascinated observer as Steve started yelling at Bill, asking him why he violated their agreement.
"You're ripping us off!", Steve shouted, raising his voice even higher. "I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!"
But Bill Gates just stood there coolly, looking Steve directly in the eye, before starting to speak in his squeaky voice.
"Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
You seem to have an odd tendency to describe spammers as "pleasing" or "catering to" google--as if they're doing google a favor, and google appreciates their actions.
But of course what they're actually attempting to do is "scam" or "trick" google. What google wants to find and serve are valid, relevant, unique, contentful, non-spam pages; spammers attempt to thwart that by impersonating those traits however they can.
Believe me, there is no one in the world who wants "optimizing your site for google" to become passe more than google does.
Actualy one of the few feature in Opera I don't like and could not change to my liking is that Google search. Reason:
I use a german opera from swisserland. So opera will either use goggle.de or google.ch to search. But I am an IT proffesional: 8 of 10 searches I need from google.com.
Martin
MS will never produce a search engine as good as google. Perhaps technically, but will people really use it? How does it plan to convert millions of users from Google? MS once again just trying to use its monopoly to conquer another market unfairly.
The box said: Requires Windows 98 or better. So I installed Linux!
Me too.
BTW: Best is when you are in another country where don't understand the language. Go to google.com and get google.ua all with cyrilic letters - just great.
I wrote a very unfriendly (but not unpolite) mail and a month later the "Google.com in English" link apeared. It had been there before but now it is not translated into the local language any more - allways in english and allways latin letters.
Still they won't give up on the redirect.
Martin
Such a bold statement from a company which has yet to produce any of it's own software.
=)
"in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday."
Damn, that go along the line of me viewing those nasty message on google (and other place) "this video cannot be viewew in your country".
This is the internet. It is not delimited by country, ARGH!!!!!!!
I guess human need to make border to feel comfortable (and yeah, if the search engine adapt to its user, it can become better... what I hate the most is restriction)