Slashdot Mirror
Windows Live Search goes Live
novus ordo writes "Microsoft has launched the Windows Live Search. Among the reports,
Microsoft Search Senior Product Manager, Justin Osmer says that "The beta, and a revision expected in a few months, will challenge market leader Google."" I like the more dynamic image searching tool. It seems really slow- I'm not sure if that's the dynamicness (is that a word?) or just standard
launch lag.
A quick test I performed showed interesting results. I plugged in the word Galen in both Live and Google. Live returned 1,160,846 results while Google gave 13,200,000 results. Considering Live was just released the discrepancy isn't hard to understand. What was interesting was what the first result was. In the case of Live the first result was a photo studio run by Galen and Barbara Powell. For Google the first result was much more relevant: a link to the University of Virgina Health System which talked about the medical practice from the past of which Galen is listed in the links.
The second result for both Live and Google were the same, the Galen Institute homepage.
While one test doesn't a study make, considering Microsofts track record of returning results, I don't forsee myself using their service (especially with all the clutter on the screen).
As an aside, does everyone else get the weather forecast for LA in the lower left corner? I'm on the opposite coast so maybe it's related to where the servers are rather than what IP you come from.t
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
All of google's products are Beta and work perfectly.
GMail hasn't been working all that great for me since they introducted GTalk. I had been having laggy service when logging in including errors that I should wait a while and try refreshing. Since then, I have been communicating with GTalk people via bitlbee and have it disabled in GMail (click the link at the bottom). That solved my issues.
While I believe that Google's "Beta" products are generally in perfect working order, I won't say that they are all "working perfectly".
I think it's about time Microsoft hired a UI team. Or if they have one, get them the hell back from the 10 year holiday they've been taking after Windows 95.
If you've played with Vista and see the magical disappearing menu bars and buttons, (TIP: hiding functionality under the banner of relevance is damn confusing to EVERYONE) you'll see that Windows Live seems pretty indiciative of a company that has no clue what thir UI should be doing.
That said, Google Video could have done with the GMail team's sparkle. Seems like a lot of companies are simply getting it wrong right now.
Do you really think that MS doesn't have the personell[sic] necessary to create a great search? Just because google has a "fun" work environment doesn't make them the greatest.
Actually, Google has a lot of the best people because of their work environment and because they are very picky. The strategy is not so different from my current job. Relax the environment, no dress code, free snack food and soda, free beer in the fridge, no one checking what hours you work, a couple couches is you need a cat nap. What does this cost our company? Probably less than the salary difference of one high paid employee if they decided to move to the job that just paid the best. People work here because they want to and because they are smart enough to realize that money isn't everything and if you're going to spend a huge portion of you life working, doing so in a fun environment while working on interesting projects is a better choice than retiring two years earlier all stressed out and hating your field.
This means we have to hire motivated people, but also means the really smart ones want to work here. We have some ex-MS employees here. We also have had Google steal away a guy. MS has a lot of people, including some very smart ones, but their culture makes it hard for them to really get anything done right. Throwing money at a problem and hiring a dozen managers who get in each other's way and are constantly modifying what you are working on is not the best way to get things done.
it's also similar to Apple's OS X loading icon.
has anyone got it to work in Safari? just says loading for me.
Disclaimer: I used to work for MSN (this disclaimer will soon be ironic, though)
I just loaded up live.com and searched for myself. Decent results, whatever...search sites don't usually wow me any more. Then I click on the "images" tab and...both of my Firefox windows just disappear.
I am very amused that Microsoft found a way to crash Firefox on RH4.
But the clear winner: Windows Live
So it's got something to do with Windows(R)? Nope. Nothing that I can see. It's a web server that can be called up by Mac's, Suns, Crays, etc... No windows in those.
So the "Live" business it's:
IMHO The Worst Name Ever
I was scrolling through a test search, and all of a sudden their crappy excuse for a scroll bar jumped to the left! What the hell? Suddenly, ads popped up in its place.
Advertisers are not going to like that. It will cause many, many mis-clicks on the ads. I narrowly escaped clicking on the ad under my mouse.
If this were a site using Google ads, they would be suspended by Google for violating quality assurances that Google gives their advertisers about the pages on which their ads are published.
Middle clicking search results is also disabled. They actually had to go out of their way to stop me from opening search results in tabs by middle clicking.
Regards,
Steve
Have you every tried to go to googles website with javascript turned off. Everything degrades properlly and is still usable. Try to use this search with javascript turned off and it utterly flounders.