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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?
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
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
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.
Agreed. It's impossible to know where you are in the list, I can't use my mousewheel on it, it's not where I expected it to be... pretty much every single mistake Flash designers were making back in the late 90s.
Just because it's in AJAX doesn't make it any more of a good idea.
I guess what they were trying to do was just get the adverts always in view, something that could have been achieved with CSS and web browsers that support CSS properly. Oh wait, hang on...
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...
A more simpler page is on http://search.live.com/
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.
I just get a "Loading..." message that keeps spinning. I'm pretty sure its just pre-caching the internet for faster searching.
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?
Agreed. Another problem is that you cannot do a text-search on that page. Even if a word appears (later on in the list), if you do a search for it, you won't be able to find it. In firefox, you usually jump to the search term... but now you can't because it is hidden in some way. So you can't actually navigate the page.
Also you can't do the whole "I remember it was on the third page of the Google search results" thing. You have to laboriously find things in a long list that you can't scroll through quickly. Why do they feel the need to put a fancy scroll-thing when browsers have that functionality built in? It just makes it run slow.
There are times when AJAX is helpful (like for smoothly scrolling dynamic maps). Displaying text results is NOT a good time to use AJAX... just use normal clean HTML and everyone will be happy.
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
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
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.
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?)
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