Forum Moderators: mack
Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday."What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
"The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant," he told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit.
Reuter's Story [today.reuters.com]
I see problems on the horizon.
Lets see them get the basic deep indexing and half relevent serps right first - before they start claiming they can knock Google off the number 1 spot in 6 mths.
Currently its all pie in the sky, the results are dire, their reach is dire and their search bot is currently next to hopeless - making a statement like that is a pure pipe dream imo and not even remotely likely in another two years let alone 24wks!
Think of Microsoft as the sleeping giant being awakened... They can afford to enter the market a distant third and wait to release their real search engine when it is ready.
I don't doubt they will create a better search engine.... Google has a ton of flaws that are probably intentional (irrelevent results result in greater adwords clickthrough)... Flaws such as putting edu's and .gov's on top for some commercial finance keywords...
Microsoft probably has been at work with this new engine the past six months behind the scenes....
Also do not forget the ten billion business's which are now partially/fully reliant on adwords/adsense. G is going to be a tough cookie to crack for MS imho but its just my opinion.
Simply creating better results is just a small piece of the pie, marketing those results and maintaining the improved results long enough to knock G down before they can counter those improved results is pretty much impossible. MS really dropped the ball and knows it, loosing so many key people to Google over the last 2 years does not help anything either.
Our logs do not hide anything and MSN has continued to die off as G has continued to gain, after almost 8 years of doing this fulltime I give MSN a A+ on hype and a massive F on delivery.
Vaporware, vapor promises, never knew it was so easy.
I think the Microsoft guys forget one thing, the public will decide who is the best, not their programmers or marketing guru's.
Microsoft: goodluck and thnx for all your idea's.
Power to them i'd say....some refreshing change is always welcome.
I was a Windows v1 user (for Pagemaker DTP) and I remember the first version of Internet Explorer. Not impressive products at all. Netscape and Apple must have been laughing for weeks when they first saw them.
So, come use our not so good search engine! B. Gates 2006
I am not sure where MSN is headed..I find their results decent, but they seem to focus on a more rotating serp structure, in other words, SERPs seem to have the same sites for their top results, but they are listed differently (one day #3..then next 11, the next 7, etc.) which I dont't like.
In any case, I have trust in Google, and I dont't think they are just gonna let MSN intimidate them.
I hate how MSN seems to think they can just come in last minute and burn their competition just because they've done it in the past.
I feel Google has earned it, not MSN. They seem to just be able to "buy out" what they want, with their armies of cloned engineers and technology scientists.
Trust Bill to somhow tie it hard into Vista.
I think this is great point. A new search engine in 6 months with a new OS on the horizon.
Now just give us a contextual ad program to compete with Adsense and all will be peachy.
Is this where I laugh hysterically, or does that part come six months from now?
ain't gonna happen. Remember the anti-trust case about IE being embedded into Windows? They've gotta leave the customer a choice.
Also, I doubt Vista is going to have a large customers base anytime soon. Some early adopters maybe, ...
From what I have seen MSN hasnt improved the SERPS and in some cases has taken steps backwards. The the sectors I watch has Y and G being very similar with MSN tossing in the most non related sites one could imagine. When they can at least find 10 on topic sites to list I will at least read their PR ramblings.
Holloway said that the company has no plans to integrate its search engine into Vista
I don't think MSN can afford to make more mistakes in delivering results. Microsoft made this same comment a year ago about their search technology, and they are still lagging way behind.
Please consider Microsoft's video gaming venture, and the rush to release the XBOX360 before PS3, as they did not want to have to compete with the PS3 on equal footing due to PS3's superiority in power. It seems to me that Microsoft keeps wanting to play with other big players in different industries, but does it half-@$$ed.
And before you call me a Microsoft basher, let me say that I really like XP and am looking forward to Vista. At the moment the only Microsoft products that I have a problem with are the IE and MSN Search.
I don't see why MS can't double its market share in 6 months with Vista plus an updated SE... they may not knock off Google in one swift blow but they'll slowly eat into their market share.
I don't think MSN can afford to make more mistakes in delivering results. Microsoft made this same comment a year ago about their search technology, and they are still lagging way behind.
I'd say this is their third "cry wolf". If it doesn't work this time, forget it and settle for #2 or #3. Google's lifeblood is search and if MS launches something that is anything less than the current standard set by Google, this will be their last chance at having a larger piece of the pie.
If they say 6 months it will be more like 18 months to roll it out and then another year for them to actually get their 'features' working as advertised. MS is great at telling you all the stuff you should be able to do with things they make, trouble is most time when you try it simply doesn't behave as expected.
Regards...jmcc
Trust Bill to somhow tie it hard into Vista.I think this is great point. A new search engine in 6 months with a new OS on the horizon.
Now just give us a contextual ad program to compete with Adsense and all will be peachy.
How about contectual ads of the desktop? Maybe M$ will offer a "free" version of Vista that runs contectual ads on the user's desktop? You open Word, and ads about "Word for Dummies" and low prices on M$ Office at Target suddenly appear on your desktop. The ads periodically refresh as long as you have the program open.
Hackers would probably have a disabler out before Vista even ships. But of course, that would violate the licensing agreement, which everyone pays strict attention to. :)
Personally, I really hope that they do come out with something that is, at least in some way, superior to Google. As a user I'm sometimes frustrated by google's algorithms and search features, especially when I'm searching for know items. As a manager of websites, I'd like to see any engine start to take a chunk out of Google's marketshare so that I don't feel as much of a slave to Google's algorithms.
In the end, no matter what Microsoft comes out with, I really see no way how that they could take away a majority of Google's traffic in a short period of time. Google just has too much inertia. Remember that Google had clearly superior search for quite some time without gaining large hordes of users. It was really only after Yahoo started using them that they really started to take off.
Why don't you have a dance from this one instead
[www-db.stanford.edu...]
:)
Every time I use MSN search it's getting better and better
Are we using the same MSN Search?
Google gets worse all the time, but it'll be six decades to get worse than MSN.
Or are they just saying in six months they will start using Google results and put the word "U.S." on the page...
