2by4 - 10:20 pm on Jan 11, 2005 (gmt 0)

"Some people think it's ready, some people think it is NOT ready"

Simple searches are ready, but more complicated ones aren't. I agree with phantom.. if they release it now it's a mistake, have you tried actually using this as your daily search engine yet, not just for testing your favorite keywords? I have, and I can't use it. I can use Yahoo or Google,whatever their faults may be.

Let me rephrase this, I just double checked, some simple searches are ready. It still can't give me the product name / product site in number 1 position for a global product, which yahoo and google both can. There are far too many failures like this to consider it ready as far as I'm concerned, but they will have to start testing it more heavily over the next few months. I think you are reading too much into that blog article personally, all they said there was they are going to once in a while mix in some beta results to test the actual system, the servers etc, with real traffic loads.

It was only a few weeks ago that you could only go more than about 7 pages down into the serps, this thing is still very raw and new. Only a few weeks ago, MSN beta was reviewed by a prominent online computer news site and declared easily the worst search engine out there. It's improving, but it's beta. I thought the first so called 'beta' versions were really 'alpha' versions, it's definitely a beta now though.

"A search engine isn't about publicity. They should launch when they have a search engine worthy of the name. They don't now, and all the pumping talk to get them to release an immature product isn't going to make it mature any faster."

Exactly. When I can really use this product for an extended time as my real search engine it's ready, as it is now, real searches almost always end up with me having to use google, I don't have time to mess with a product that simply isn't ready to go yet.