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."

Comments

same trick as msn search

[pimpimpim]

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.

Re:same trick as msn search

[drsmithy]

This is what I don't get about MS. Every time they come out with a new OS, they block off a large segment of the market because of very high minimum requirements.

Eh ? Windows has an _excellent_ record of being usable on older hardware. Typically if it's 5 years old or newer, it'll run the latest version of Windows either out of the box or with some very minor tweaks/upgrades.

Windows XP and 2003, for example, are quite usable on ca. 1998 PCs if they're bumped up to 512M or more of RAM. They're both usable for very basic tasks (email, word processing, simple web browsing) on ca. 1995 Pentium machines, if you really want to.

Even the current version of Linux will run on a 486.

No feature-comparable version of Linux runs on a 486 (particulary a 486 as it would have existed ca. 1994). No KDE, no GNOME, no Firefox - at least not at any sort of acceptable performance level.

DOS runs quite happily on a 25 year old PC. That doesn't make it a valid comparison to Windows XP. Neither is any version of Linux that runs acceptably on a 486.

When you look at it, windows XP doesn't really offer anything new over windows 95.

Much like Linux doesn't offer anything over DOS...

Since microsoft doesn't sell PCs, doesn't it make sense that they sell a product that works on as many PCs as possible, instead of working only on PCs made in the last 2 years?

Generally, Microsoft set their baseline machine as something that was high end ~5 years previously and mainstream ~3 years previously (since most businesses run on about a 3 year cycle). This has been true for pretty much every version of Windows ever released.

Additionally, you ignore that the vast majority of customers don't buy Windows, they buy a new PC that has Windows installed - so how well it runs on older hardware for most of their customers really is irrelevant, because they'll only ever use it on hardware that is quite capable of running it.

Re:same trick as msn search

[Dare nMc]

>how can microsoft say that they will be better than google in 6 months

same way they can say "Spam Will Be 'Solved' In 2 Years"
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=17500979

you redefine what you really meant when you look at what you accomplished in 6 months. better could be database size, it could be speed of execusion, it could be lower % add buffer. whatever 1 (or more) area(s) msn excells at over google, will be defined as proof of better.

Re:same trick as msn search

[liliafan]

No feature-comparable version of Linux runs on a 486 (particulary a 486 as it would have existed ca. 1994). No KDE, no GNOME, no Firefox - at least not at any sort of acceptable performance level

If I want to run a firewall I can do so with linux on a base standard 486 with no extra ram, or even a router, however, I can not do the same with windows XP or 2003.

That is feature-comparable to the feature I would want to use from a windows 2003 box on a router! On a router I don't care about GUI, I don't care about eye candy I care about routing traffic, the routing feature I wish to use does compare to windows 2003, but I can do it on a 486 with 16M of ram.

MS claiming that linux will not run with the same features on old machines are forgetting that in a lot of cases people are using the machines for a specific purpose they don't want the extra cruft.

Re:same trick as msn search

[Asphalt]

I'll be happy if web developers can quit wringing their hands over how to "optimize their site for Google".

Too many people are skimping on quality content, and spending more and more time trying to "please Google". It has just gotten to the point of silliness.

It's gotten to be a real problem. You can have crap content but come in first or second if you obsess over optimization, but if you simply concentrate on content, and not Google, you may not come up in a search.

I'll would like to see an engine that can better evaluate content, and free people up from trying to cater to one particular engine.

I use frames and PHP on some client sites that are widely regarded as the best of the informative source of information in their respective fields, but they come up on page 5 of Google, wheras some meta tag hogs with flashing banner ads and one line of text related to the topic comes in number 1 or 2.

I would like to see "Optimizing your site for Google" to become obsolete.

Re:same trick as msn search

[idonthack]

No feature-comparable version of Linux runs on a 486 (particulary a 486 as it would have existed ca. 1994). No KDE, no GNOME, no Firefox - at least not at any sort of acceptable performance level.

But you would be able to run XFCE and a lightweight web browser. Under Windows you'd have to use 95 and a very old version of Explorer.

Linux doesn't offer anything over DOS...

Quoted for hilarity. You've obviously never used a Linux command line.

I hope they do

[mccalli]

Honestly, I hope that they do. I find the quality of Google search results has gone down, and I would appreciate a competitor doing better and forcing Google to take a more serious look.

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

Re:I hope they do

[mgblst]

I would love it if Google just banned some sites from appearing on their search results, like about.com. This would improve there service.

Its about time.

[DeadSea]

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. 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.

easy...

[alexmagni]

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...

OK, Maybe...

[ursabear]

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.

Do you remember

[OzPeter]

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.

Haven't we heard this before?

[a_nonamiss]

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.

Re:Haven't we heard this before?

[gnovos]

If they were going to have a search engine better than Google, they would just do it, not announce it 6 months in advance.

Very simple, they want to catch those big bosses who are afraid of choosing the wrong technology. People may have been thinking "I WAS going to search for something today... But what if I use the wrong search engine? I'd better wait six months and see how this MSN thing looks and try again."

Re:suuuuure....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, really it is true. Here is a copy of the beta code that I obtained through some shady contacts:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Microsoft Search Engine</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"
CONTENT="0; URL=http://www.google.com/>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Wher e do you want to go today?
</BODY>
</HTML>

Better Google by MSN?

[rivo]

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

Vista phising protection

[diegocgteleline.es]

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.

Re:Vista phising protection

[Xabraxas]

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 true but you can turn this "feature" off.

Re:Vista phising protection

[GoodbyeBlueSky1]

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 true but you can turn this "feature" off.

I think GP's point was how, once again, Microsoft will use their OS monopoly to compete unfairly in another market (here, search engines. somehow the concept of searching online has now become a market...)

In other words, who cares if you can turn it off? Most users won't. How many people turned off that fucking Clippy thing in Office? Not enough of em.

Re:Vista phising protection

[Senzei]

Not only can you turn it off, but a window pops up the first time you run IE7 completely explaining the feature, what happens, and asks whether you want to turn it off or on. It isn't on by default, as you make it sound to be.

If it is a big box full of text with an 'ok' button it might as well be on by default. Doubly so if it is more than one page/frame/prompt.

Linux Vs Windows search results

[Siroro]

Ironic search results: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=linux+vs+wi ndows The first few results are quite unbiased.
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=linux+vs+wind ows The first few results clearly favour Windows.
If Microsoft want their search to be more popular their results have to be unbiased to be taken seriously.
Just food for thought.

msn != google

[moochfish]

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.

Better search tech not as good as NEW search tech.

[zippthorne]

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.

Re:The difference...

[Tom]

Good explanation, yes.

More importantly, M$ regularily delivers less than was promised, later than promised. Apple quite often delivers earlier than promised (see PPC-Intel switch) and often more than promised (see MacBook Pro CPU upgrade just prior to shipping).