Gates on potato chips, microprocessor chips, and Google

From new TIME magazine

[pleeker]

The new issue of TIME magazine has an interview with Bill Gates [time.com] about a variety of topics, including one question about MSN Search....

I HEAR YOU GUYS ARE WORKING ON A NEW SEARCH ENGINE. WHAT HAVE YOU GOT THAT, OH, SAY, GOOGLE DOESN'T? A lot of the innovation comes with our natural-language understanding. Today if you type in a term like chips, you can get something about potato chips or microprocessor chips. You often get back pretty funny stuff. You really need the computer to read the articles and have a little bit of understanding of what's in there.

So if MSN Search ever advances beyond vaporware, we'll have to remember to do a search for "chips" and compare SERPs with Google. Nothing like having a benchmark. :)

[jeremy goodrich]

LOL, good one. I'll remember to email them if their search for 'chips' isn't up to par ;)

[Chndru]

>search for 'chips' isn't up to par

The inherent difficulty is in judging what is the "par", rather than the actual mechanism of achieving it. It goes with any personalization search.

[pleeker]

The inherent difficulty is in judging what is the "par", rather than the actual mechanism of achieving it. It goes with any personalization search.

Apparently Mr. Gates knows what the 'par' is. Maybe the rest of us will know it when we see it.

As long as a search for 'chips' doesn't show me stuff about Ponch and Jon, I'm cool with it.