Joho the Blog
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November 13, 2004
Microsoft schmoozed me, but I'm still googling. The beta of the MSN search engine is pretty good, but after poking around, I'm not falling in love. And that's what it'd take to get me to switch my habits and loyalty from Google. I can't do a full head-to-head evaluation of their raw strengths as search engines. I'm not qualified. But after using the two of them for a couple of days, I'm finding what I need more easily with Google. For example, a search for "thunderbird msf blank inbox" gets me to information about why messages are disappearing from my Thunderbird inbox. MSN's doesn't get me to a useful page as quickly, even though it found 97 pages compared to Google's 69. Or maybe it does, but their page summaries are more obtuse. Plus, MSN doesn't offer access to cached files, a feature I use frequently. There's stuff to like in MSN. Local searches are a couple of clicks closer than at Google. The slider interface that lets you adjust three parameters is, I suppose, cool although I didn't find myself actually using it. The search builder builds a complex search query for you, but oddly doesn't skip the step where you see the complex search query. As Dave says, "We desperately need a two-party system in search." We need competitors. When you're going up against an institution like Google, something that has in effect become part of the infrastructure, being as-good-as isn't enough. You can't wave us over your finish line. You have to give us a good solid kick. And that's exactly what the MSN beta doesn't do. But here's the thing to remember about Microsoft: They don't have to get ir right the first time. They don't have to get it right the second time. They just have to last long enough to get it right eventually. And that's what they frequently do. Furthermore, is there any reason to think that the current crop of us hardcore googlers are really who they're going after? (By the way, MSN Search doesn't lay out right in Firefox; try resizing the window horizontally or go to Search Builder > Results Ranking and you may see what I mean.) Jason Dowdell suspects MSN Search is using Google as a source of URLs to spider. It's so fiendishly clever that it's almost admirable! (The article is slashdotted here.) (Thanks to Greg for the link.) Posted
by D. Weinberger at November 13, 2004 10:55 AM
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Comments
"get ir right"
Anyway, agreed to most of your points :)
Posted by: Philipp Lenssen | November 13, 2004 12:24 PM
Microsoft does seem to git ir dun, but the fact that the googlers get smart things done, and the MSers pretty much only get making money done, puts me on the side of google. there can be improvements to google which will come and competition is key to getting there, but "the slider interface" idea seems to sum up microsofts approach, which will make them money from the people they're going after, but certainly wont do a damn thing in terms of advancing the search engine.
Posted by: Brad | November 13, 2004 01:07 PM
Competition it is not.
See the slashdot discussion of MS crawling google:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/11/1724221&tid=109&tid=217
The report they are dicussing:
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20041111MicrosoftCrawlingGoogleResultsForNewSearchEngine.html
Posted by: Greg | November 13, 2004 01:40 PM
My personal page has my name only in the title. Google finds it as the number one hit when I search for my name. MSN does not find it at all. It looks like they are ignoring headers.
By the way, a similar experiment determined that Google ingnores entries in a META name="keywords" web page header. I suppose it was getting abused.
Posted by: Mark Dionne | November 14, 2004 03:51 PM