Forum Moderators: mack
"We took an approach that I now realize was wrong," he said of his company's earlier decision to ignore the search market. But, he added pointedly, "we will catch them."
And, like NS did, G works under the MS dominance of the desktop.
I don't think they can get away with integrating search
That leapt out at me. I know folks here see this coming, and I've always thought much the same - what chance have other SE's got when the never-change-default-settings users have MS search bolted onto the GUI of their new Windows box? - but if MS are stopped from doing it in some way, what then?
I'm not convinced that Microsoft has ever done the best job at delivering what people want -- they focus more on making people want what they have. (Which is certainly effective!)
As long as Google can always honestly claim to offer the best user experience, they will have a strong user base. That will definintely involve watching and incorporating everything Microsoft does -- when Word Perfect didn't support Windows, they died. When Netscape didn't support all the custom tags and other horrible "non-standard" code that IE did, they died.
On the other hand, what do I know?
(I'll still propose my search engine research project for a Master's thesis.) :o)
Actually, I don't really care about the technical superiority of the serps as long as it's a spidering engine. From my side of the screen, it's all about demographics and MSN delivers JohnQ waving credit cards. (Though they'll likely never match NBCi on that score.)
Don't kid yourself. Google is not going to just lay down, it's going to be an interesting challenge for both and it will be great for wmasters and searchers...nothing is better for consumers than healthy competition.
I would not want to compete with Microsoft in any industry.
Sony is doing just fine.
MSN has nothing to show for yet.
.. so lets wait and see, this approach would not be advisable for the other search engines though ;)
Really? [edition.cnn.com...]
I'm glad to see more SE competitors in the market rather than just google dominate it.
Bribing websites to put up robots.txt:
User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /
I'm not in favor of this, just speculating how MS may play.
We took an approach that I now realize was wrong
funny 'nough:
do you guys regognize a pattern here? a long time ago - i think it was around '96 Gates made exactly the same type of statement on the internet in general: "There is no money in the internet". Later in time he regognized this asumption was wrong and started to catch up.
I really whish our little company could afford mistakes like that.... ;-)
Man, I couldn't agree more. MSN generates unbelievable referrals. I mean, visitors from msn convert at over 2x the rate as Google for us across several industries.
Any "free" search engine competetiors with some traffic should be gladly welcomed, with open arms, by the webmaster community!
I think the real danger to Google's position is the switch of other SE's (e.g. Yahoo) away from them. Someone used to searching on Yahoo won't care where the results come from.
As to the Google/NS comparison, let's not forget that Google also know about what happened to NS, they will not be as easy to get.
Only way would be for MS to install their toolbar by default, so the user doesn't have to go anywhere to search, but has his search box always on his screen.
~You can bet your last dollar that will happen.
TJ
Had enough of M$ changing their environment/products to outdo companies out their good fortunes.
IIRC, IE's default home page is msn.com, which includes access to a search engine. Also, if a user types keywords into the address bar which do not translate into a valid web page, I believe it performs that search for them on msn.com.
The big advantage that I see here is that Microsoft creates Windows, and a very prominent operating system, and so the default search engine for all of these users that don't change their settings (which is probably most of them) is MSN. Any advantage that Microsoft has in luring searchers, it seems, would have already been realized.
The average user doesn't know what's powering the search engine on the backend, and probably doesn't care.. so a change of backend power by Microsoft probably wouldn't even be noticed by most.
So what advantage will Microsoft have over Google that they don't already have?
I don't think they can get away with integrating searchand similar quotes.
Of course they will. What amazes me is that Google haven't learnt from the NS saga. In the UK you can put an "injunction" on a company to STOP them doing something until the legalities are ironed out. Now Google better do that NOW not after they hear that MS are about to launch.
As for the comment that Microsoft are better at working woth advertisers, I have to agree with that comment at this time. Google can be amazingly intransigent and short sited on customer care with significant clients. Indeed - they probably don't even know who many of their largest clients are!
Dixon
did you know that there are many ex-netscape employees that work for Google? Several in key positions.
Any advantage that Microsoft has in luring searchers, it seems, would have already been realized.
Well-said. And those people who have MSN as their default and dont know how to change it or even care, wont know how to search for files on their computer. And all the talk about longhorn and integration of search for files on harddisk and webpages on internet is clearly vaporish.
Only way MSN can get and stay in the top is to lure the searchers away from Google and from what i see till now, it's a looong way behind. And even if MS is as good as Google now, i see why any G users wud want to change?
Me thinks Google vs MS is not exactly analogous to Netscape vs MS since, G is for free and you dont have to download/install anything. And G has followers bordering towards fanatic.
It's Google's game to fall rather than MS's game to catch. I see Yahoo as a big threat since they have sticky visitors and they can do amazing personalization, since most who search in yahoo, have an account with them, while, G just has a cookie.
G has followers bordering towards fanatic
Trouble is, this is starting to change. If they rolled out the lastest algo across all phrases, this would be their 'Altavista' moment.
If MSN show better results than Google users will switch in droves.
Google is "search in the surfer's mind" :)
_If_ MS is ever to win the Search battle, one thing is for sure: It will take a lot of time and MS's money.
Look at what they have achieved until now in terms of Internet: Not much, in comparison with the amount of money burnt. They toasted NS, what have they earned from this?
IMO, the only thing MS has ever been successful is with the desktop. Everything else has pretty much failed until now. Gates was driven by his vision to have a PC with his software installed on everyone's desk, and he did everything to achieve this. Now he isn't hungry anymore.
<added>
Btw, I love to have competitors in search, this way our eggs fall into several baskets :) But I don't think MS will do.
</added>
