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Microsoft/Yahoo! Merger a Good Idea?
NorbMan writes "Last month there was speculation about Microsoft's interest in joining forces with Yahoo! to battle Google. Today, a Merrill Lynch analyst recommended a Yahoo! takeover by Microsoft. From the article: "A Yahoo/MSN-Microsoft combination would have garnered approximately 41% share in the US of search queries [in April] versus Google with 44%.""
Very bad idea. No one will trust their business to a company called 'Microhoo!'.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Can anyone say antitrust?
:wq
After all, Google is the America-hating empire!
This would also counter the European threat to our computers, with its shameful and sordid history.
Maybe if they merge they can have a sinking fleet of redudance and end their miserable lives quickly... rather than the old-fashioned one after the other sinking ship style.. ?
Theoretically, the combined user-base would surpass Google. But many users like me, never visit MSN / Yahoo after acquiring a Google identity (gmail).
The combined HPaq is still below Dell, although prior to the merger, the combn. was much bigger.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Somehow, I think that the moment yahoo joins (msn eats it up) with microsoft, mysteriously half the 41% will move to google or another different engine.
Is not numbers we are talking here, is not even efficiency. IT's TRUST.
With $40b in the bank, why not just buy Google and be done with it :)
http://religiousfreaks.com/Face it, there's really no way around google yahoo or msn.
Have you tried finding a good alternative to any of them?
Most smaller engines are powered by either yahoo or gooogle.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Microsoft can't simply assume all the crap that Yahoo have bought and distribute. Yahoo is large, baby. It's not search only.
Microsoft has already been convicted of monopoly activity and yet somehow people keep talking merger.
Yep that's it _, we want to allow more centralization of market power.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This monopoly of commercial operating systems for personal computers, and monopoly of commercial word processors for personal computers, is proving somewhat a millstone round the neck of Microsoft. Are they about to sell off these businesses so that they can move on ? Games consoles, search services, etc.
I expect if the price was right, IBM would take Windows and/or Word off their hands. It's only money.
Ok, these 'market analysts' look at spreadsheets of market shares, etc. Look at the technology under the hood: Microsoft uses all Windows products. Yahoo uses BSD and PHP as their environment. I'm sure Gates and company would LOVE to be running such a large, critical portion of their business on OSS! Or throw all Yahoo's code away and re-write in .NET? Right!! From a platform point of view, anybody who thinks about this for more than 30 seconds will see that this is a non-starter. Nothing here. Move along.
What's better than having the trust and reliability of Microsoft paired with the strategy and insight of Yahoo!
Oh...
First, Google's capitalization is higher than Yahoo's (they are more expensive).
Second, remember when AOL bought Netscape? Something like 40% of their workforce quit the next day. If MS buys Google, the google brain trust (which is were all the value is) hits the door immediately.
They'd have 41% for about 10 seconds until users began migrating. There's no way Yahoo could fit comfortably into the MS spectrum of products. The real stickiness for Yahoo isn't search, it's webmail and the other services that get people using it as a portal. They search at Yahoo because its already loaded up in their browser. None of those services are something that MS wants to maintain -- there's way too much friction with MS's existing products. So they either kill it all off or force users toward Live et al, which is not what those users wanted, not the least reason being MS has a negative reputation in this space.
Poisoning all of Yahoo's services doesn't gain you any marketshare in search. Maybe a few percent as collateral damage, but nothing like what's being predicted here.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Does anybody use Yahoo for more than just searching? What about their excellent portal, My Yahoo!? It's the one place I always start from to get my daily and intra-daily doses of news, including slashdot. It's great for tracking stocks. It's highly customizable.
What happens when Microsoft gets its hands on Yahoo? How long before this great site stops working properly on anything but IE? Can people just switch to Google and find this kind of service? Does anybody do this anywhere near as well as Yahoo?
Technologies used are irrelevant, from a business point of view (don't flame that) - it's all about market share. Google are running away with the search market - and with it, the future of advertising. New entrants have no chance, so the only competition is going to come from the existing players getting their act together. Both yahoo and MS have embedded user bases which will erode unless they can get to a par with google. If this means rewriting some code base, or MS having to rely on oss for a while, so be it. If they don't rapidly tackle google, they'll lose a lot of $$ in the medium term, and lose their business in the long term. Of course - one day the US Govt could break google up (Bell style) but they've never done that with MS, so MS really do have to win the web war to survive and at the moment they're being pulped by google. Yahoo may offer a shortcut to victory (or at least a more even fight).
Why is it assumed that all the people that currently use yahoo will instantly start using the new MSN search? You can't buy search marketshare. It don't work like that.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Instead of two large companies to worry about we only have to fear one even larger company.
So, would their first task after merger be to port Yahoo's massive infrastructure over to .NET? It sure would look bad if they kept Yahoo's BSD-based services. Yahoo also has enough integration issues of its own - for example, combining Yahoo Photos with flickr, Yahoo MyWeb with del.icio.us , etc - bringing another bundle of technology into the mix would just completely bog developers down and allow Google to run further ahead. Plus, there is immense resistance to that sort of change - note the outrage a while back when Yahoo bought up various services like eGroups, and planned to merge them with the Yahoo Clubs. People didn't want their Club turning into a Group (despite the fact that the Groups was a better service). Announcing that your Yahoo Group will become a MSN Group (powered by Yahoo) isn't going to go down well.
Also, perhaps combining the two services wouldn't result in the combined marketshare? I use the search.yahoo.com interface on occasions to get a second opinion to go with Google - surely various other people use various sites in this way. If you turn two sets of results into one, you get one slice of this pie, instead of two. And will the shiny new merged services have every single feature the two previous ones did? I think not, as the most likely course of action will be "throw the worse technology away, add a few features to the better one, and call it a merger". So, you'll lose everyone relying on features X, Y, and Z who now have no reason to use your service.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
Being able to make a good search engine is a skill that only a select few posess. They guys at Yahoo aren't bad. If something like a hostile takeover or merger occurs, how many of them are going to resign within a matter of weeks? I'd venture to say "a lot". People don't like it when established company atmosphere is changed all of a sudden. If Microsoft were to gobble up Yahoo, of course they'd law down a bunch of changes and piss off the best techies. When that happens, Microsoft will have pretty much paid a couple of billion dollars to buy "*.yahoo.com". It's a valuable domain name, but not that valueable.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What SHOULD have happened as a result of the anti-trust action against M$ was a ten-year moratorium prohibiting M% from merging with or acquiring ANY OTHER COMPANIES! They should have been limited by the court to whatever they could accomplish internally, without swallowing other companies and reducing competition further. Total purchases of products from other companies should also have been forbidden, as well as exclusive licensing (I guess a non-exclusive license might be OK).
But of course the Bushwimps would never think of such a thing so they settled for the traditional 40 lashes with a wet noodle.
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
This assumes that the merger doesn't cause users to run away. Consider both Yahoo's and MS's recent efforts to revamp their website: both caused drops is marketshare.
The only company gaining serious traction in search is Ask.
Smart money says pay for a little guy with upward mobility. If MS were smart (and it isn't) they'd go after Ask. Merrill Lynch is just brainlessly applying old merger principles to new economies. It's not helpful.
In the computer business, smart money is on growth, not marketshare.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Big Brother + Viruses + China = :(
Microsoft merging with Yahoo! is like me merging with pizza. It ends up with a slightly larger me.
I'm not quite sure about that... remember Pizza the Hutt?
Can you say shelleytherepublican.com one more time?
Is there a search engine available at MSN or Yahoo?!?!
Sun Netscape AOL alliance
Sounds vaguely familiar - Just change a few terms:
Sun = Microsoft
Netscape = Google
AOL = Yahoo
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
All I can say is Hitler would LOVE this Shelley the Republican person...
The only motive to do this for microsoft is to make its own monopoly position stronger. Mergeing with yahoo would result in a stronger position versus google, makeing the possebility for elimenating google even greater. Remember: microsoft does NOT really need yahoo (it's already got MSN). Microsoft only needs yahoo when it wants to elimenate google.
Why would Microsoft want to elimenate google? Well, for starters: it's a big, high profile, highly visible company... which just happens to support Open Source Software, and that includes... Linux (do you ppl remember Microsoft declaring 'war' on Linux?).
If this merger is allowed to continue, we might not have a big, high profile, highly visible google in a few years... and that would be very convenient to Microsoft.
seen the tactit assumption that the markets parts add up to the new total. This assumption is made too often. However, if the parts are inherently a misfit, the total too often is much less than the sum of the parts.
It seems this advice was given in desperation, since the goal should be to enhance the whole. That is, just becoming bigger does not assure retention of markets. Moreover, misfits can destroy existing value. Despite the currently available cash horde at Microsoft's disposal if these units do not mesh to create greater value than their independent parts the premium paid is not worth the price.
If this action is taken, at least, no matter how bad the executive decisions are it is unlikely to destroy MS immediately as Borland did to itself when it bulked up to fight MS. Borland simply did not recognize the value of some of the pieces that could have generated positive cash flow despite not being premier products.
Well i remember a story on slashdot a while ago, about them hiring the lead python developer
I googled...
I guess you mean this article?
Thanks for the information - I wasn't aware of that until just now. I guess that there will be something in the comments on that article about what Google plans to do / have done with Python.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
The corporate cultures of these two companies just couldn't live together. Microsoft a technology company good at enforcing the status quo, Yahoo is wannabe technology company that survives by being smarmy and sleazy, while forced to follow companies with better hiring practices and less conservatism in the ranks. I pray for you Yahoo employees, oh wait you're already praying...you should too, considering how you make your money.
Is shelleytherepublican website a joke or mental-illness?
I wonder why the name reminds me of Frankenstein.
The technology under the hood is totally irrelevant from a business profitability point of view. Hotmail did not run on Windows at first either. Over time, Microsoft ported it over. ... It might take five years, but who cares?
I can smell the money burning when I hear stupid shit like that. The arrogance is stunning. Have you seen the contradiction in your thinking from the above parsing yet?
Who cares? The customer cares, you idiots! They are not going to hang around for five years worth of buggy service. That's Microsoft, though, their precious marketing image is always more important to them than actual service or .... the customer. Yahoo appropriately stands for "You Always Have Other Options."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
C'mon guys - it's a great idea. Microsoft can then spend the next five years throwing a ton o' cash at getting rid of those nasty FreeBSD machines and replacing all the LISP code with V-Basic. Should be good for dogfood giggles for years to come!
or perhaps Micyahoo!
:-D
anyway, it would get a whole bunch of yahoos! in one place
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Nah, even Hitler would be too liberal for her.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Seriously! No question that Yahoo does search better than Google. There is a prevailing, ridiculous reasoning among companies that once you buy a smaller company you somehow become that company and that's great for competitors.
It's been great for Southwest airlines. They do air way better than everyone else, their market cap and growth prove it. I used to work for American and everytime Southwest came into a market AA closed up shop and left (Nashville hub anyone?)
American planted themselves a hub in San Jose California (primarily to get Tokyo routes) and it used to be that AA and United controlled traffic intra-California. Sure there was AirCal and PSA but the solution was to just buy them up. Then came the day that Southwest came into California and within two years became the largest intra-California carrier. American's solution? Sucker Reno Air (then based in Reno) to take over their gates. Southwest got a GREAT run for their money and actually had a formidable opponent.
So what did AA do? They bought Reno Air and brought to it the AA culture and Southwest said THANKS!!!! They just bought out Southwest's competitor and AA was an easy target to pick off because of their inefficiency that's pervasive among legacy carriers.
Know why Warren Buffett makes so much money? He insists as part of an acquisiton that current management stays and then gives them a fat pay raise. If it ain't broke, don't fix it and in M&A, the "M" tends to do a lot of "fixing".
If MS buys Yahoo! and brings the MS culture, then the union will not represent a significant threat to Google. Yahoo! does search better than MS and bring the MS culture and mindset only dumbs it down.
When you chain two people and throw one off the bridge the other tends to go.
It dont?
Until Vista comes out and proves to be something that solves their issues of worms, security, and spam zombies I think thier resources are best suited on what they already have (fix Windows, Outlook, IE, etc.). And if Vista doesn't, well they will need to still thier problems.
Since Microsoft is primarily a manufacturer and marketer of thier OS we already know any aquisition of a search service is an extension of thier software (and video game) marketing department. Do they care about kids wanting to get the facts right for thier book report? only as far as it helps sell Windows/Office, etc. and keeps them there, or helps generate revenue through Windows/Office, etc.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I dunno, that's a lot of evil to concentrate into one place.
Re. the naming: Back when IBM-acquiring-Apple rumors used to circulate back in the 80's, the joke was this: What do you call the merger between IBM and Apple? IBM.
This would be a disaster on the order of the AOL-Time Warner merger. Kiss your market cap goodbye.
Two companies, who both have products I never use, are about to merge... Move along, nothing to see here.
Yahoo is in trouble and needs to do something. But such a merger would almost certainly kill Yahoo rather than save it. Microsoft would be financially unaffected, remaining a big bag of money.
It's obviously a joke, if someone actually believed it they would have no grasp of reality, insane...
Hardly. Remember the story just a couple of days ago about which operating system and browser different companies' employees use? Google employees mostly use Windows! (Insert huge disclaimer about the unreliability of these stats here).
To throw in some numbers from my site: Googlers coming to it with Linux: 9, with Windows: 2.
Too small a sample size, I know. But it was the same tendency towards Linux last month: Linux: 11, Windows: 1.
Now i just can't imagine how bloated will the new yahoo-msn-live-plus messenger be! Maybe AOL can join the merge too (oh god)
//WR
Ok, here we have Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. All three are well known for their contributions to the 'computing' and internet world.
Google: Search Engine, Applications.
Yahoo: Social Networking, Advertising.
Microsoft: Operating Systems, Applications.
Each of them, with Microsoft having probably the largest 'geek' database on the planet, is trying to encroach on the realm of another. The first letters of each of their names makes the acronym "GYM", which reminds me of the time sweaty jocks were fighting over who was going to humiliate the cornered 'nerd' first.
Well, they have data, they have also examined it (most likely in many different facets)... and patterns do actually tend to make things easier for people who want to make the most money off the 'herd'. The interesting thing is that those big three have enough data from the populace to ensure that our children will already have bought into what they're planning to market (whether it is vaporware or not).
Will there be an advantage if Microsoft purchases Yahoo!? Sure, but I don't think that will actually affect those using search engines. Google is ahead of the game and they 'started' with the best marketing tactic in the computer world. Actually having a useable product. Yes, nowadays they do have beta applications, but that's expected. I do, however, like the idea of presenting a working product to the world (even if incomplete) as opposed to selling a bunch of 'ideas' and powerpoint presentations.
I tend to think that Google would be unaffected.
Would it be better if Google was to buy Yahoo?
\
Most mergers end up hurting both firms. The turmoil and uncertainty surounding a merger would cause the best Yahoo employees to leave and maybe also some from MSN. Yahoo uses little, if any, Microsoft technology and Microsoft would have to replace it all with windows just to save face. This internal strife around such a technology change would cause all of the best to leave. Additionally there will be a huge competition between MSN and Yahoo employees and who's technology are you going to use.
Anuyways, Microsoft, given their past business practices, should not be allowed to buy anybody.
After all, Google is the America-hating empire! This would also counter the European threat to our computers, with its shameful and sordid history.
You know, that website would be funny if it were not so sad. If any republican believes the crap they read on that site, perhaps its time we shoot them in to the sun (long overdue IMHO).
Tes
Just when I was starting not to despise (some aspects of) Yahoo so much again at long last, this. No matter how far fetched, just it having been said, makes me feel... nervous.
...for just about everything except searching. Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Chat, Yahoo Hosting (Geocities) and so on. Alexa (which like most statistics should be taken with a grain of salt, but...) currently lists Yahoo as its most popular English language site.
Would Dracula merging with Frankenstein's Monster to take out, uh, Buffy, be a good idea? No, you'd just get an even uglier monster (especially compared to the sexy Goog- uh, Buffy) with a combination of skills that would seem to plug the others' holes (eg, Dracula's shapeshifting plus FM's zombieness) but really just leave it trying to focus on too many things at once (Blood? Electricity? Love?!). Plus as any geek knows, Buffy always wins.
I'm convinced that popular services like Yahoo and MSN Groups will be casualties of a merger of this sort. You currently have both of them primarily because they wanted to compete directly with each other at any cost. After they merge, they'll start by eliminating duplication - meaning either Yahoo or MSN Groups will go. Then, they'll try to find ways to make people pay a fee to use whatever service is left - and that will destroy much of their usefulness. (EG. Freecycle pretty much works through Yahoo groups - and it wouldn't make much sense to have to pay monthly fees to browse listings for free giveaways to those who can't afford to buy them.)
I actually laughed at this, despite never watched an espidon of buffy.
They're a bad investment, they've been a horrible company (friend worked there early on) for a long time now.
Ask may be growing their market share, but it's only by basically buying it.
It's like Xbox. It sold because basically because MS was putting a $100 bill into every box.
If you think Xbox is a big success, buy into Ask. If you think in old fashioned ways like profit and return on investment, you'd do well to move on.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Who's 'we', you and the botnet you control to get around bans on /.?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I don't think I've ever watched any espidons of anything either.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
>It's obviously a joke, if someone actually believed it they would have to be Ann Coulter, insane... :)
Fixed your post.
And what if Microsoft took over Apple? Would everybody magically start using Linux? /.ers and their stunted logic -.-
Why don't these two companies just improve their respective products...?
Msn Group really really REALLY sucks. most of the time, i went to site that said they have a msn group, then i went there then it said the group is not there. Msn Group have less group than Yahoo Group, most of the link to msn group is dead, just a group error saying that it not there anymore. And you are mostly required to sign in to explore the group while YAhoo dont need to but it give a option if membership or not is required.
MSn Group is poorly designed, i like the waya of Yahoo Group group look like now, it better and improved. for Msn Group, it didnt even change
I wonder why the name reminds me of Frankenstein. Because Mary Shelley wrote that.
Most misspelled word ever...
I'm looking over the wall, and they're looking at me!
Ajax? It evolved into a language?
Thanks,
Ned Nitpick
So many creative slashdotters and not one of them thought that maybe if Microsoft bought Yahoo then it would be a good way for them to offload their sinking MSN division to Yahoo. This would be much better than a spinoff of the division. Also this way it would not attract Antitrust Attention while Microsoft still controls a large portion of the industry and can subtly promote Microsoft services through it.
I have always thought that microsoft needs to diversify and get rid of some units to be more agile. This would be the perfect way to do that. Also in general MSN users would not be harmed as much by the move to yahoo as yahoo users would be with a move to MSN.
Think about it Microsoft, if you could pull this off you would have a much larger portion of the search business. Of course now it doesn't prominently feature the Microsoft name but is that really so important.
Powering things in the background and pulling sinister strings without people knowing is where it's at.
Now I am not saying that microsoft would have the insight nor would Ballmer be humble enough to follow this strategy. But if they did then the possibilities would be much better then the other way around.
Any thoughts on this strategy? What would be the downsides of this? I can never think of downsides to my own ideas but that is what slashdotters are so good at.
-------
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Software Defined RFID - The Rifidi Emulator
www.vivisimo.com
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
then the Yahoo services would be unavalable till MS gets Yahoo off Linux & onto ...
Obligatory Futurama Quote: Fry: Oh, God. It's the future. My parents ... my co-workers ...
my girlfriend ... I'll never see any of them again. [Long Pause] ... Yahoo!
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Microsoft owns Channel 9 in Australia (also known as ninemsn)
Yahoo! owns Channel 7 in Australia (also known as yahoo!7)
Both channels are bitter rivals (and were long before Microsoft and Yahoo! got involved), so what would happen there if Microsoft and Yahoo! merged?
Incidently, yahoo7.com.au has a far superior design to the new beta yahoo design every other country is touting.
Well I think this may work in reverse as well.
Dont get me wromg, but even if the merger does basically nothing, doesnt matter, they just got rid of the other huge competitor through swallowing them up. Then watch them merge with ask.com, another subtle way of killing off more competition for google...and microsoft.
Microsoft cares not if the companies they merge lose users or quality, they have less competitors, and now have new software they didnt even create that is now theirs. they'd own del.icio.us and flickr. and thoroughly rape those, and rename them to "Microsoft Webmarks" or "Microsoft Foto" or some generic soul-less name like that.
They care more about gaining products that they could never create out of their own heads and killing competition.
Then do anti-competitive practices such as lobbying laws aimed at google indirectly, go on a copyright-fest, making any of google's apps a "security risk" in their next OS, making google render incorrectly in IE, etc.
Eventually they'll find a way to hurt google, they have to act fast, at least while the current administration is in power to get away with things like that.
After that, they'd pretty much be the dominant search engine/portal you'd have.
AOL would probably cut ties with google, and sooner or later, microsoft would eat them too, and have control over the IM world.
Microsoft wants to be #1, and unlike the airline world, there's more than just customers and service to gain and offer. There's technology to be had.
Those who have the most toys win the users, especially when there's no good alternative. Then they use those toys to ensure no one else can share the fun.
Look at it is this way: Yahoo is already using a relatively open, web-based strategy to make money. Meanwhile, Microsoft has poured hundeds of millions of dollars into MSN, first as a way of binding Windows-using Internet users to Windows even more tightly (which didn't make money), and then more recently, making steps of not requiring Windows to get interesting functionality (and that still might not make money). Seems to me Yahoo should go it alone, and if MSN's new strategy fails, just hire away the good engineers working on the new-style MSN.
I would question why you would think that Yahoo is a better search engine than Google. That has not been my (and also coincidently most other people's) experience...
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM
That'd be a great combination.
As to mixing personal and financial, I'm not sure whether to say "I'm not" or "I'd be a fool not to". Depends on how you think of it
The the people who took them over and took them public were the same kind of people who ran pets.com and such. They're there to try to make the company look successful, rather than actually build a strong company. They're concerned about the stock price, and less about the actual value of the company. If that appeals to market timers (such as yourself), that's great. Personally, I'm more interested in is the company doing smart things that would make them valuable in the long term and preferably even improve the state of the art and thus improve their customers lives some small amount.
Ask instead buys search technology from Google, after their years of insisting they have natural-language queries no longer holds water with investors.
Whether I like it or not, Xbox has made a mark. I actually kind of like it. But that's not the point. Xbox made the mark by losing over $50 a customer. Not just giving away money and getting it back in software and peripheral sales, but actually the Xbox divison has reported a loss roughly 50 times the size of the number of Xboxes sold.
It is easy to do big business by selling things below market (see the phrase "they're doing a land office business". Buy.com and pets.com did it in 90s. So it's difficult for me to ascribe some kind of level of brains or skill to MS for doing this. And it certainly wouldn't convice me to buy into MS as an investor based upon the cash flow of Xbox.
What MS has to hope to do is now monetize all those customers they bought. They need to do this in exactly the way pets.com and buy.com weren't able to do. It's going to be a tricky thing to do and I don't see any reason that MS is up to it. They're walking away from Xbox (orig) as fast as they can, probably because they can never get to revenue neutral on it. And they're pushing 360, it's a great machine with many awful games and it's still being outsold by PS2.
Microsoft has laid the groundwork. Whether its for their grave or a big success I just can't tell yet.
I don't feel like MS and Ask always work similarly, I was only referring to the Xbox division.
I do agree MSN search sucks. I attempted to spend a month using each search engine because I felt like I needed to "put my money where my mouth is" when I dumped on Google for doing something any company could do (search). I went the distance on most of the search engines and still use Yahoo search instead of Google to this day. But I couldn't do it with MSN. After a week and a half, I had to quit. It was just too awful. It had just been improved and has been improved again since. But it's still awful. MS just can't get search right.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95