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Tue 1 Feb, 2005 09:17 am
Quote:SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. has unveiled the full-release version of its search engine, turning up the heat on Web search leader Google Inc.
The world's largest software maker also revamped its MSN.com Web portal to make its search engine more prominent and also tweaked the site's content and advertising to remove clutter, said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's vice president in charge of content and services at the MSN Internet division.
At stake are advertising dollars as well as bragging rights in one of the technology industry's more interesting growth areas.
"We really are about answers and not about links," Mehdi told Reuters, taking a swipe at MSN Search's nearest competitors, which also include Yahoo Inc. (Research)
"There's a huge amount of room for improvement" in online searches, Mehdi said.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/01/technology/microsoft_search.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
Nothing like good ole American competition to drive companies to outdo each other. And the customers win!
I will take a look at MSN Network, but it will take a lot to convince me. I have been "connected", to Google for so long, and am so comfortable with it, that it would take a major league improvement to cause me to switch. What about you?
It seems that in many ways, this is a prelude to search engines becoming "answer engines" for certain types of "ready reference" queries.
I'm sure, google wil have an answer for "attack" soon.
It seems everyone's design operates somewhat differently. The only fault I find with Google is it's based on popularity. As an example on a posting here at a2k I searched for guanche a primitive white tribe in the Canary Islands. Google found nothing. I did the same search at
http://www.alltheweb.com/ and found the answer. Boiled down If you don't find it on one go to another. Use the one you find easiest as your starting point and alternatives as secondary.
Yeah, like I want to use anything developed by Microsoft if there is something else available. What a joke. Nothing else they have works, so why should this?
I haven't played with the new MSN search engine (which has been in public beta for a while now) that much yet, but it is pretty awesome for providing answers to simple, common questions... e.g. try 'prime minister of japan', 'population of turkey', or 'united states president in 1927'. Quicker access to info is always shweet...
Bobsmythhawk, just FYI, alltheweb (as well as altavista) are owned by yahoo and return web search results identical to yahoo.
Thanks Monger. I appreciate the input.
I've got the MSN beta - it got installed on my new puter as the default. Not so lucky with it yet, but it does seem to be improving. It's not very good at doing A2K searches, which Google is brilliant at.
MSN's beta has some interesting tricks that other search engines don't. But it is also not too good at evaluating backlinks and the ranking of results suffer as a result.
Nevertheless, it's another unique index and now we have (ranked in order of quality):
Google (powers A9 and others)
Yahoo (powers Alltheweb, Altavista and others)
MSN
Teoma (powers Ask Jeeves and others)
Then there is everyone's favorite underdog:
Gigablast
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