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intelliot
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 Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 9:15 pm Post subject: Microsoft on the Trail of Google |
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| Quote: | It must be fun to walk through the Microsoft parking lot, reading the bumper stickers on the cars. Can you imagine what they must say? "Honk if you love monopolies." "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean we're not out to get you." "My other car is a Hummer, too."
But the lawyers' bumper stickers probably say, "You can't copyright an idea." Despite its admirable if largely unsuccessful recent efforts to pioneer product categories - wireless watches, wireless screens and so on - Microsoft's greatest hits have been clones of other people's successful work, including Windows (based on the Macintosh), Pocket PC (PalmPilot) and Internet Explorer (Netscape Navigator).
Last week, Microsoft identified the object of its latest obsession: Google, the No. 1 Internet search page. (Google, you may recall, is preparing for an initial stock offering with an estimated value of $25 billion. Nobody bats around numbers like that without attracting Microsoft's attention.)
For years, Microsoft's own Web search page, MSN Search, has finished a distant third place in the search-engine popularity wars (behind Google and Yahoo). The company's new plan is apparently to remake MSN Search in Google's image.
The Googlification of MSN will occur in two phases. The first, a cosmetic makeover, is now complete and ready for your inspection at www.search.msn.com. The new look consists of an empty white screen that loads blissfully quickly, even over dial-up connections, and an empty, neatly centered text box where you're supposed to type in what you're looking for. The search page is ad-free and, except for the MSN logo, even devoid of graphics. (On July 4, however, MSN added a waving-flag graphic, an imitation of the way Google's witty artists dress up its own logo on holidays.) In short, MSN Search couldn't look more like Google if you photocopied it.
Once you click Search, you're in for a pleasant surprise: Microsoft has stopped trying to trick you into clicking on its advertisers' links, which it used to scatter among the genuine search results. That approach may be a short-term money-loser for Microsoft, but it's a huge winner for you. It's a more honest approach than Yahoo's, in which advertisers pay Yahoo to ensure that their links appear, unmarked, among the true search results (a practice called paid inclusion).
MSN still displays ads, of course, but they're off to the right side or up above the results list, clearly labeled "Sponsored Sites" and inside shaded boxes - exactly like Google's.
Unfortunately, Microsoft calls the separation of advertising an experiment, not a permanent change in policy. It seems to be trying on honesty in the mirror to see if people will find it attractive, rather than realizing that running a principled business is the way to win customers' trust. In short, "MSN will continue to evaluate the potential of paid inclusion to improve relevancy."
(Let's hope that MSN will also continue to evaluate the English language, which also includes the perfectly good, much less annoying noun "relevance.")
In addition to finding text on Web pages, Google and Yahoo can also find news stories, product prices and so on; MSN Search offers its own twist on this idea. Just to the right of the search box, a pop-up menu offers a few intriguing choices. Some are common to Google and Yahoo (Stock Quotes, Shopping), but two of them mine unique MSN properties: Encarta Encyclopedia and Movies.
Movies taps into the MSN Entertainment movie database, which offers descriptions, ratings and credits for every movie ever released (and some that haven't been, including a 2007 listing for "Spider-Man 3"). For current movies, you can plug in your ZIP code for local showtimes.
The Encyclopedia option, though, is a letdown: it shows you all of the matching entries from Microsoft's Encarta software, but many of the articles themselves are off limits unless you pay $30 a year.
If you're a regular MSN visitor, this overhaul is a windfall. You woke up one morning last week to find that the MSN Search page was faster, cleaner and Googler.
But at this point MSN still relies on search technology licensed from Yahoo. (The search results aren't identical to Yahoo's, but the family resemblance is unmistakable.)
For many searches, the results are pretty much the same at Google, Yahoo and MSN Search, which is to say outstanding. Search for "convert yen to dollars," "divorce statistics for Brazil," "5-string banjo tuning" or "oh susannah sheet music," and no matter which of these services you use, the very first search result is a direct link to the information you want. (So often is the first listing what you want, in fact, that you begin to see the appeal of the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google's home page. If you click on this instead of the regularly scheduled Search button, you go straight to the Web page that Google considers most likely to have your answer, bypassing the results list entirely.)
But do enough searches, spend enough months, and Google gradually re-earns its reputation for superior accuracy. Search for "history of Phillips screwdriver," for example, and you'll find the answer hiding behind the very first result on Google and Yahoo-but not until the fourth listing in MSN Search's results. (Caveat searchor: Search-engine companies are constantly tinkering with their search formulas, so your results may not match the ones described here.)
Similarly, typing "England average income" yields a useful answer in Link No. 1 on Google's list and No. 3 on Yahoo. MSN Search doesn't answer the question at all (at least not on the first couple pages of results).
All right, so the new MSN Search looks like Google but doesn't work like Google. In that case, what's the point?
That's the idea behind Phase 2 of the MSN Search makeover. Microsoft is busily refining an all-new search technology of its own, something the company claims will be even better than Google's - a "next-generation search experience," in fact - to replace its licensed Yahoo software within a year or so.
You can try out Microsoft's extremely early version of this new search algorithm at techpreview.search.msn.com, but don't get your hopes up. Microsoft emphasizes that the preview doesn't search very much of the Web, and isn't intended to compete with Google or anyone else. Instead, the point is to collect feedback from "Webmasters and search enthusiasts."
In that spirit, here's some feedback. First, the tech preview is very, very slow. Second, it should be more discerning; if you search for "motorized draperies," 13 of the first 15 results all come from the same company's Web site. Third, kill the sense of humor: the first result in a search for "1963 Oscar winners" is "1998 Oscar winners." (The actual 1963 winners don't even appear on the first page of 15 links.) In fact, on many searches that Google and Yahoo aced - "Richard Nixon's dog," "fertility over 40" and "Britney wedding photos," for example - the tech preview's first results page comes up empty-handed.
Even if the searching part worked perfectly, though, MSN Search would have a ways to go before catching up to the mature, highly polished application-ishness of its rivals. Google and Yahoo, for example, can search for photographs on the Web, not just text. They offer cool shortcuts that can instantly summon phone numbers, FedEx tracking information and airline flight data (Google), or the cheapest local gas, movie showtimes and telephone area-code identification (Yahoo). And don't underestimate the informational power of Google's news-group-searching feature, which plucks out individual words from millions of Internet bulletin-board discussions.
Even so, Microsoft has done a beautiful job de-gunking its home page and removing paid ads from your search results. Will its new search technology attain anything even close to Google's "relevancy?" It's too soon to tell. But if it's successful, Microsoft will have demonstrated its brilliancy, boosted its own importancy and taken another irreversible step toward world dominancy. |
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cvrk3
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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| the battle for search engine supremacy is on. It is quite natural as google tries to enter the other doamins, microsft will try to enter search domain also. it is a matter of "information" |
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tubaman93
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| Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah I agree.
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Orpheus
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| Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 11:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Yup, me too! |
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Mayur
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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| i hate msn. they stole the googles search engine page. www.search.msn.com |
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Arisna
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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You know, concurring with the first part of the article that mentions Microsoft using other people's work, I think they've managed to get away with it in the past by crushing the "little guy" and stealing his lunch money.
With Google's international fame, my guess would be that it ain't gonna work this time, not for Microsoft to nick the site design and then say it's better. |
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tntcheats
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| Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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Macintosh is a pretty big company.
So is Palm Pilot.
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Arisna
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| Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 6:29 pm Post subject: |
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| You're right there, but I'd argue that Google is much bigger than either as far as its user base. Compared also to Microsoft, both Mac and Palm are very little guys. Not so with Google, I do not believe, particularly with regard to popularity. |
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Felman
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| Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 12:14 am Post subject: |
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google is welcome in my house anyday 
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julien
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| Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 12:29 am Post subject: |
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I think Google will stay on top, at least for a very long time. Unless Google drastically changes something, or the others drastically change something for the better, I don't see any other search engine being so powerful and wide spread.
Google is fast, simple, has ample and accurate results, and is already the best known engine available. Not to mention that is sounds the coolest.
-Julien
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realguy
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| Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 12:47 am Post subject: |
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| agreed |
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putnik
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| Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 1:39 am Post subject: |
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I posted this a long time ago somewhere on the forums.
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DaMoUsYs
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| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 9:34 am Post subject: |
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I hope to see MSN Search gain succes becaus if that will happen we can find much more
but Google will always be the number one |
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tntcheats
So sexy it hurts
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| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | google is welcome in my house anyday |
If I ever have kids, Google can take my first born 
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MaSs ZeRo
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| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 9:47 pm Post subject: |
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Googles Remains still the best Search engine for me forever ^_^
Google rocks |
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