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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.
See, this is the differance between MS and Google. All of google's products are Beta and work perfectly.
But when microsoft says Beta they mean: "In the beggining there was nothing, And God said Let there be light..."
-first post?
*gasp*
/.'ed MS?
We
Gotta be glad now they don't operate out of the UK.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, that was an interesting product demo, I got the "server busy" message. At least it wasnt blue.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
That scroll bar is horrible. Nice UI design Microsoft.
I searched for "google" and got a long wait, then an error popup
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
We /.ed a search engine? or is it this slow by design?
MAybe its becuase we are using non-ms browsers?? can you imagine their logs.. stating that the firat 80% was firefox or others?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
The page still hasn't loaded, and I had time to type this response.
It's got some custom Java/ActiveX thing that won't load in my browser.
Oddly enough, Google just has plain HTML, and it works fine. I can't imagine that there's a connection.
That's sarcasm, for the impaired.
Still waiting for it to load....
Reeses
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
I guess they didn't get the simplicity we like so much of google
/down
why the hell do we need scroolsbars in the search window!! we have one in the browser.. can't event use page up
and so many cheap baby graphics, no wonder it's so slow
I hate it already
Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the law Love is the law, love under will Capital drives the will of mankind
www.google.com
I know that's just pure nasty - I just couldn't help it.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I got an error on the page... looks like they are using oracle as a backend? :)
Was ms sql 2005 to strong for such a simple search engine?
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
Hmm... Doesn't seem to work at all with opera. Just says loading.... loading.... i could have performs a dozen google searches in the time i waited.
Maybe someone should post a coral link. Let off some of the load from MS.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Live.com:
Loading results for query boobies
images 1-15 of 3957
6/15 are of the bird
Google.com (SafeSearch Off):
Results 1 - 20 of about 51,700 for boobies (0.07 seconds)
4/20 are of the bird
I think the results speak for themselves.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Interestingly enough, a search for "miserable failure" leads www.michaelmoore.com at the top, instead of Google's standard George W. Bush biography
Try using Googles cache
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
The dynamic window showing the results...well, it just sucks. It doesn't show enough results, and the scroller doesn't give any kind of context as to where you are within the results. Its slow. That may be due to this computer being slow, but I don't have to worry about it on any other search engine. I'd almost prefer frames (not by much).
I was going to tell all of that to MS, but the "help us improve" link was 404 when I tried it...
Simplicity is a virtue that Microsoft regularly ignores. The additional features on the main page and the loading graphics are just unnecessary. And apparently using a normal scroll bar isn't good enough to look through your results.
Their algorithm could deduce the meaning of life and I'd still use Google just so I didn't have to deal with that UI.
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.
First things I see: - Slow as hell - Non-standard scroll bar hard to figure out - Search results returning weird things No thank you MS. Try again.
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.
Relevant to whom? Is this the first time you have used a search engine?
I'm hoping you at least tried "Galen and medical" before you decided that Live's inability to read your mind wasn't reasonable.
You know, the very first time I went to www.google.com, I knew exactly what to do. The very first time I do _anything_ with M$, I haven't got a clue. I think their google-killer suffers from a bit of UI-overload, don't you?
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.
Whether they can make a good search tool is irrelevant.
It's about whether they do make such a tool.
Google did, Microsoft didn't.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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
Wow, Google must be really quaking in their boots about this. The page looks like a textbook example on how not to design an AJAX page. Apart from the apparent performance problems:
- Why use custom widgets? Does Windows not include a scrollbar widget?
- Why is the custom scrollbar completely broken? Why does the scrollbar not indicate how far through the search results I am? Why can I not drag it easily?
- Why smooth scroll?
- Why are none of the 'links' on the page actual links? If you use Javascript links like that, middle-click to open in new window/tab doesn't work.
- Why is their a speech-bubble like thing partially covering the search window
- Why do I have to click on a zoom icon in order to search? Oh, you mean a circle with a line coming out of it means "search"? Why not write "search" on the button, then?
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.
Did anyone else notice this in the source??
/* normalizes ie and ff, else ie sees an additional top margin */
document.write("");
Seems they have the same problems the rest of us have in building sites that actually work in IE...
Be Bold! BoldEverything Interactive
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.
I guess I remember the 90's too well. I am in my late 20's, and watch all those companies that had foosball tables in the lobby go under. So perhaps I am prejudiced by facts.
I lived through the same thing. Have you ever heard that correlation is not causation? This is a perfect example. Sure lots of companies with foosball tables went under, but so did plenty without. It was not the relaxed atmosphere that killed them, it was the fact that their business plans were junk. Some of them were just ways to funnel venture capital to "the guys" and have some fun. Some were incompetent people who thought because something was "cool" it was profitable. Google is not going out of business, they are making money, and so are we. Any HR drone who does not think keeping employees happy is a important concern is an idiot. Stress and poor working conditions lead to turnover, medical problems, and people motivated to do the least work possible. If I come in on a sunday to get something from the office, or grab some papers so I can answer someone's question I'm proving that keeping me happy helps, because I am there on a sunday. It is not unusual for someone else to be in the office on a sunday either. People pull all-nighters, not because they have some manager breathing down their necks, but because something really interesting is happening or because they want to make sure a customer is happy. Of course having some real stake in the company helps to motivate people too.
I'm not sure if that's the dynamicness (is that a word?)...
Yes, don't worry, it's a perfectly cromulent word. Here's an example sentence: "The dynamicness of the Live search engine embiggens its search ability."
(BTW, am I the only one who has added 'cromulent' to their spellcheck dictionary?)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.