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Windows Live Search goes Live 546

Posted by CmdrTaco from the when-giants-collide dept.
novus ordo writes "Microsoft has launched the Windows Live Search. Among the reports, Microsoft Search Senior Product Manager, Justin Osmer says that "The beta, and a revision expected in a few months, will challenge market leader Google."" I like the more dynamic image searching tool. It seems really slow- I'm not sure if that's the dynamicness (is that a word?) or just standard launch lag.
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Windows Live Search goes Live More

Windows Live Search goes Live

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  • From-the-before-the-beginning-of-time dept. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:23AM (#14875057)
    See, this is the differance between MS and Google. All of google's products are Beta and work perfectly.
    But when microsoft says Beta they mean: "In the beggining there was nothing, And God said Let there be light..."

    -first post?

  • Server is too busy (Score:3, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:25AM (#14875077)
    *gasp*

    We /.'ed MS?

    Gotta be glad now they don't operate out of the UK.

  • Already Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)

    by Buzz_Litebeer ( 539463 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:25AM (#14875085) Journal
    Well, that was an interesting product demo, I got the "server busy" message. At least it wasnt blue.

  • What is up with the scroll bar? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:26AM (#14875088)
    That scroll bar is horrible. Nice UI design Microsoft.

    • Re:What is up with the scroll bar? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lewisham ( 239493 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:29AM (#14875126)
      Agreed. It's impossible to know where you are in the list, I can't use my mousewheel on it, it's not where I expected it to be... pretty much every single mistake Flash designers were making back in the late 90s.

      Just because it's in AJAX doesn't make it any more of a good idea.

      I guess what they were trying to do was just get the adverts always in view, something that could have been achieved with CSS and web browsers that support CSS properly. Oh wait, hang on...

      • Re:What is up with the scroll bar? (Score:5, Informative)

        by kebes ( 861706 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:50AM (#14875408) Journal
        Agreed. Another problem is that you cannot do a text-search on that page. Even if a word appears (later on in the list), if you do a search for it, you won't be able to find it. In firefox, you usually jump to the search term... but now you can't because it is hidden in some way. So you can't actually navigate the page.

        Also you can't do the whole "I remember it was on the third page of the Google search results" thing. You have to laboriously find things in a long list that you can't scroll through quickly. Why do they feel the need to put a fancy scroll-thing when browsers have that functionality built in? It just makes it run slow.

        There are times when AJAX is helpful (like for smoothly scrolling dynamic maps). Displaying text results is NOT a good time to use AJAX... just use normal clean HTML and everyone will be happy.
        • I was scrolling through a test search, and all of a sudden their crappy excuse for a scroll bar jumped to the left! What the hell? Suddenly, ads popped up in its place.

          Advertisers are not going to like that. It will cause many, many mis-clicks on the ads. I narrowly escaped clicking on the ad under my mouse.

          If this were a site using Google ads, they would be suspended by Google for violating quality assurances that Google gives their advertisers about the pages on which their ads are published.

        • Re:What is up with the scroll bar? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by LnxAddct ( 679316 ) <sgk25@drexel.edu> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:32PM (#14876542)
          Middle clicking search results is also disabled. They actually had to go out of their way to stop me from opening search results in tabs by middle clicking.
          Regards,
          Steve
      • Not only that, but apparently the search engine results aren't "real" links; middle-clicking them won't open them in a new tab (though, strangely, right-click->Open in New Tab does). And the mousewheel works for me IF I click somewhere on the results page to set the focus on it.
        • Aha, you win. You need to click into or hover over the element to get focus on it. Fact is, I didn't expect to click in that white space just for fun, if I'm going there, I'm going to be clicking a link, not scrolling. It's crazy to expect my mouse to be there, especially on something like a Mac where people generally surf at less than full-screen.

  • Did they #%^ing kill google? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mateo_LeFou ( 859634 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:26AM (#14875089) Homepage
    I searched for "google" and got a long wait, then an error popup

  • Wow that is SLOW! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DebianDog ( 472284 ) <dan@dAUDENanslagle.com minus poet> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:26AM (#14875092) Homepage
    We /.ed a search engine? or is it this slow by design?

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrShaggy ( 683273 ) <chris.anderson @ h u s h . c om> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:26AM (#14875093) Journal
    MAybe its becuase we are using non-ms browsers?? can you imagine their logs.. stating that the firat 80% was firefox or others?

  • Still waiting... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Reeses ( 5069 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:27AM (#14875098)
    The page still hasn't loaded, and I had time to type this response.

    It's got some custom Java/ActiveX thing that won't load in my browser.

    Oddly enough, Google just has plain HTML, and it works fine. I can't imagine that there's a connection.

    That's sarcasm, for the impaired.

    Still waiting for it to load....

    • just AJAX (Score:3, Insightful)

      by everphilski ( 877346 )
      Just AJAX, same as Google's customized home [google.com]
    • Still waiting for it to load....

      It worked much faster here but with Internet Explorer. Here's the first search result:

      Line: 3
      Char: 25698
      Error: 'Start.Const.FirstRunMode' is null of not an object
      Code: 0
      URL: http://www.live.com/
      • It was pretty fast in Safari too. I got more results back - still think I'll be sticking with Google for now though:

        Server Error in '/' Application.

        Runtime Error

        Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

        Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to

    • Re:Still waiting... (Score:4, Informative)

      by LexNaturalis ( 895838 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:55AM (#14875465)
      I'm using Firefox and it loaded just fine. The site loaded as fast as Google's site (near-instant, so I can't provide quantifiable results).

      I did a quick search on "Natural Law" because that's one of my favorite subjects, just to compare it to the results on Google, and I found that many of the results were similar. The results were in a slightly different order, but on the whole I'd say that the results for Window's Live were just as viable as Google's results.
    • I viewed it on a corporate network with IE6 and it crashed the browser twice after about 60 seconds. After it loaded it pretty much appeared to be identical to google.com/ig but all cutesypoo.

      Really, the only advantage Live has over google.com/ig is that it has a much better URL. Unfortunately, that's probably enough to win over a lot of the noobs of the world.

  • Quick test (Score:5, Interesting)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:28AM (#14875110) Journal
    A quick test I performed showed interesting results. I plugged in the word Galen in both Live and Google. Live returned 1,160,846 results while Google gave 13,200,000 results. Considering Live was just released the discrepancy isn't hard to understand. What was interesting was what the first result was. In the case of Live the first result was a photo studio run by Galen and Barbara Powell. For Google the first result was much more relevant: a link to the University of Virgina Health System which talked about the medical practice from the past of which Galen is listed in the links.

    The second result for both Live and Google were the same, the Galen Institute homepage.

    While one test doesn't a study make, considering Microsofts track record of returning results, I don't forsee myself using their service (especially with all the clutter on the screen).

    As an aside, does everyone else get the weather forecast for LA in the lower left corner? I'm on the opposite coast so maybe it's related to where the servers are rather than what IP you come from.t

    • Re:Quick test (Score:3, Interesting)

      by generic-man ( 33649 )
      How do you know that 12 million of the Google results aren't just copy-and-paste clones of the first 1.6 million? Lately Google has been returning an awful lot of clone results: Wikipedia, "product review" sites, phony blogs, and so on. Makes me wonder how many useful pages they actually index.
      • I absolutely agree. I just ran the test to see what would happen. I could have used Linux (as someone else has already done) or chose Britney Spears (ahhhhhhh!) but I thought I'd try something a bit different.

        Had I taken the time to go through the first 50 results from each site I probably could have gotten a fair understanding of how many relevant links were returned. However, I'm too lazy to do that so I just posted my initial findings and let the rest as an exercise for the reader to consider.
      • It really doesn't matter if Google is returning a few million clones, so long as the first few links have what you're looking for (preferrably the first). I would HOPE a search engine would show me every single clone site recahable by different addresses - just not at the top of the list. Unless it was the really the most relevant...
      • You'll have to wait for that answer,

        I'm still scanning throught the first 1.6 million.

    • Relevant to Whom? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cranky Weasel ( 946893 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:35AM (#14875217) Homepage
      In the case of Live the first result was a photo studio run by Galen and Barbara Powell. For Google the first result was much more relevant: a link to the University of Virgina Health System which talked about the medical practice from the past of which Galen is listed in the links.

      Relevant to whom? Is this the first time you have used a search engine?

      I'm hoping you at least tried "Galen and medical" before you decided that Live's inability to read your mind wasn't reasonable.
      • Nope, Galen it was. That's how I do searches. I start with as wide a search as possible and then filter from there.

        Sure, Galen and medical would have been a better choice but I wanted to see how the two compared using the broadest possible search.

        As I said in a post above, this was just a quick search to see the difference in results. It was not a full-blown test of either engine.

        For the record, I just ran the search 'Galen medical' on both sites and on Live the first relevant link is sixth whereas on Go

    • Re:Quick test (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tx ( 96709 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:40AM (#14875290) Journal
      What was interesting was what the first result was. In the case of Live the first result was a photo studio run by Galen and Barbara Powell. For Google the first result was much more relevant: a link to the University of Virgina Health System which talked about the medical practice from the past of which Galen is listed in the links.

      The Live result was just as relevant to your keyword as the Google result. Expecting psychic powers from search engines is a fools game, a search engine can only go on your keywords, it can't know which of the many contexts you happen to be thinking about for those keywords at the time. As you say yourself, one test doesn't mean much, but I don't expect that Google would do much better in the long run with the criteria you seem to be applying.

      • Re:Quick test (Score:5, Insightful)

        by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @11:19AM (#14875738)
        Actually, it probably does - that's what the "personalized search" is about I guess.

        In the other hand, why on earth does microsoft thinks that a ajax scrollbar is going to be better than the integrated browser scrollbar? A way to keep the search field at first sight? I'd rather have a search field which moves when I scroll down the page than that thing....also, it's not obvious for users how that scrollbar must be used. How I get more results? I had to spend a time trying to figoure out what's going on there.

      • Re:Quick test (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MSG ( 12810 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @11:53AM (#14876133)
        a search engine can only go on your keywords

        I'm glad you don't make search engines.

        The usefullness of a search engine is directly proportional to its ability to discern the relative probability that each page matching your search terms contains useful information. Every major search engine uses its own set of heuristics to decide how useful a page is, and to what extent it is related to the words that it contains. It's not only reasonable to expect that a search engine can guess which, of the millions of pages may match your query, you're looking for, but it may be the only reason search engines are useful at all.

        • Re:Quick test (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Orlando ( 12257 )
          What ranking can a search engine apply to a search query of one word, as this poster has used?

          • Re:Quick test (Score:3, Interesting)

            by dabraun ( 626287 )
            If you believe the original poster then the search engine should know that you only care about famous uses of the word and that smaller individual people and companies are not as important.

            Honestly as long as the first few results as a set cover the most relevant sites I don't think that the order within those first 3-5 entries really matters - and it's highly subjective without having some per-user history to go on.

            Perhaps search engines should make a distinction between when you are searching for 'big nam
    • (especially with all the clutter on the screen).

      Dude, you miss the point... this is supposed to contend with this: Google Customized Home [google.com]. Except Live.com actually came first. If you want to you can close all of the boxes and get a search page that is just as simple as the Google page - a "Windows Live beta" splash icon in the upper left hand corner (smaller than the Google logo), a search box in the middle of the page, and a very small "©2006 Microsoft | privacy | legal | feedback | support | Windo

    • Re:Quick test (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pulse2600 ( 625694 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @11:50AM (#14876098)
      In the case of Live the first result was a photo studio run by Galen and Barbara Powell. For Google the first result was much more relevant: a link to the University of Virgina Health System which talked about the medical practice from the past of which Galen is listed in the links.

      This example explains why people need to be as specific as possible when entering search terms. Maybe if you entered Galen Institute or Galen Medical you would have a better time. Galen Rowell (not Powell, I assume a misspelling on your part) is (was, he's dead now) a very important and relevant figure in nature photography. Most of his work has to do with mountain scenes and mountaineering. As an avid nature photographer, if I simply typed in Galen, I would expect his name to show up in the top 5, maybe even the #1 link, while scratching my head about this medical nonsense.

      Think of how many words there are that can refer to a plethora of completely different subjects. One name or word will be significant to me for one reason, while it may be significant to you for another reason. The computer can not and will not ever figure out which significance you are concerned with on its own. You have to tell it why it is significant to you - "Galen Institute" vs "Galen photography".

      "Machine will never conquer man because machine is dumb."

      • Re:Quick test (Score:3, Interesting)

        by npsimons ( 32752 )


        Galen Rowell (not Powell, I assume a misspelling on your part) is (was, he's dead now) a very important and relevant figure in nature photography.

        And "Galen" (no last name, just "Galen") was a much more important pioneer of the medical arts, who is known around the world.


        This example explains why people need to be as specific as possible when entering search terms. Maybe if you entered Galen Institute or Galen Medical you would have a better time . . . As an avid nature photographer, if I simply typed

  • I searched for "linux" and it didn't return any results!

    If they want to challenge Google they aren't going about it very well...

  • WOW!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Menotti M ( 846491 )
    They certainly are competing with Google on response time.

    I probably could walk cross-country to Microsoft and submit my search on paper quicker than this. Or maybe use the cans connected by string.

  • Simplicity ??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hexa00 ( 319213 ) <hexa00@PARISvideotron.ca minus city> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:28AM (#14875122)
    I guess they didn't get the simplicity we like so much of google

    why the hell do we need scroolsbars in the search window!! we have one in the browser.. can't event use page up /down

    and so many cheap baby graphics, no wonder it's so slow

    I hate it already

  • Already /.ed - Mirror here (Score:5, Funny)

    by PinkyDead ( 862370 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:28AM (#14875123) Journal
    www.google.com

    I know that's just pure nasty - I just couldn't help it.

  • oracle? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Soothh ( 473349 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:29AM (#14875124)
    I got an error on the page... looks like they are using oracle as a backend?
    Was ms sql 2005 to strong for such a simple search engine? :)

  • opera and live (Score:3, Informative)

    by SolusSD ( 680489 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:29AM (#14875128) Homepage
    Hmm... Doesn't seem to work at all with opera. Just says loading.... loading.... i could have performs a dozen google searches in the time i waited.

  • Broken (Score:2, Informative)

    by omeg ( 907329 )
    Seems broken already; too much "loading" and "try again at a later time". It's hard to believe that this is because of their Live.com page being Slashdotted. The reason I like Google is because of how fast it is. I wouldn't tell people to go "Google it" when they need to know something if it took them more than 10 seconds to do so.

    Okay, so it's a beta. I still expected a little more responsiveness from Microsoft's newest ace-in-the-hole.

  • /.'ed (Score:4, Funny)

    by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:30AM (#14875154)
    Maybe someone should post a coral link. Let off some of the load from MS.

  • Boobies (Score:5, Funny)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:31AM (#14875168) Journal
    Live.com:
    Loading results for query boobies
    images 1-15 of 3957
    6/15 are of the bird

    Google.com (SafeSearch Off):
    Results 1 - 20 of about 51,700 for boobies (0.07 seconds)
    4/20 are of the bird

    I think the results speak for themselves.

    • Titties (Score:2)

      by Tx ( 96709 )
      Live.com
      This query has triggered our safe search filter.
      Flexible settings are coming soon.
      0 results

      Google images
      Results 1 - 20 of about 48,000 for titties (0.11 seconds)

      So how come with Live, boobies get through, but titties are blocked? Google wins anyway.

  • miserable failure (Score:5, Informative)

    by Menotti M ( 846491 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:32AM (#14875171) Homepage
    Interestingly enough, a search for "miserable failure" leads www.michaelmoore.com at the top, instead of Google's standard George W. Bush biography
  • and the explorer window finally showed something, then locked up and closed itself. truely beta. and it's still loading. i had time to type this, realize that my url was old, change it, try it in explorer, watch explorer crash, listen to some asshat at work try to be funny, at it's still loading.

  • Site Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)

    by Iamthefallen ( 523816 ) <Gmail name: Iamthefallen> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:33AM (#14875182) Homepage Journal
    Try using Googles cache [64.233.179.104]
  • On my Mac running the current version of Safari, I get a plain search box and a condescending "help" text right below it:

    Find anything using the new
    Windows Life Search!

    below that is Something that is Loading. What it is I cannot tell since it's eternally loading.

    I tried searching for "Slashdot" and it's still ... loading.

    So hmm. It's condescending and doesn't seem to work to boot.

    Doesn't look like I'll be back.

    D

  • Trying too hard to be an "application" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bitflip ( 49188 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:33AM (#14875184)
    The dynamic window showing the results...well, it just sucks. It doesn't show enough results, and the scroller doesn't give any kind of context as to where you are within the results. Its slow. That may be due to this computer being slow, but I don't have to worry about it on any other search engine. I'd almost prefer frames (not by much).

    I was going to tell all of that to MS, but the "help us improve" link was 404 when I tried it...
  • What the heck is with the funky scroll bars? They're less acurate and slower than regular slow bars.

    Also, while it's nice to have a more/less info slider on the right side, it doesn't really add much at this point.

    Pretty colors, though.
    • On the plus side, it's a nice visual effect to have pixel-by-pixel scrolling. Very pleasing to the eye.

      On the down side, scrolling should never have momentum! When I want to stop scrolling, I want the scrolling to stop immediately. I've only used the page for a couple minutes but it's already obvious that their scrolling implementation is a disaster. It feels like driving a car with bad brakes; you're always shooting past where you want to stop.

      I did notice that my mouse's scroll wheel works on thei

  • Gee, an image search function that makes me click a little 'next' arrow to see each result, one by one. How incredibly useful! With innovation like this, I wonder how companies like Apple and Google can still be in business...

  • Google's still better (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jotate ( 944643 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:34AM (#14875198)
    Simplicity is a virtue that Microsoft regularly ignores. The additional features on the main page and the loading graphics are just unnecessary. And apparently using a normal scroll bar isn't good enough to look through your results.

    Their algorithm could deduce the meaning of life and I'd still use Google just so I didn't have to deal with that UI.
  • I find the one long search results scrolling page to be quite overwhelming. I like the chunking effect of 10 or 20 results per page. While it definitely emphasizes the importance of position on the page, which might be unfair to #7, for example, at least it's mentally manageable.

  • Lame... As expected (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kimos ( 859729 ) <kimos.slashdot@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:35AM (#14875209) Homepage
    First things I see: - Slow as hell - Non-standard scroll bar hard to figure out - Search results returning weird things No thank you MS. Try again.
  • I searched for 'Microsoft google" and I got as the first result a google page I have never seen before http://www.google.com/microsoft [google.com], so I think it actually works!

  • Loading... (Score:2, Informative)

    by qcs-rf.com ( 952717 )
    The first time I heard about Google, the first thing I typed into the search window was my name. And when some forum post I had typed up years earlier showed up, I was relieved that it worked. Then I typed in my business name, which showed up in the first page of results. Then I typed in my wife's name, and her Yahoo! profile showed in the list of results. From then I was hooked.

    Likewise, I typed in all the same queries to MS's new search engine, and yes, I get results, but none of them are relevant. S
  • This seems to me to be the normal MSN results wrapped up in adverts for other MS offerings. I remember Google being such a break through because of it's uncluttered, clear and fast results. Live seems like a step backwards to me!

  • why does ms make everything hard? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by noopy ( 959768 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:42AM (#14875314)
    You know, the very first time I went to www.google.com, I knew exactly what to do. The very first time I do _anything_ with M$, I haven't got a clue. I think their google-killer suffers from a bit of UI-overload, don't you?
  • Microsoft is going to have to realize that not everybody in the world uses IE... They have gone to great lengths to make their UI clever and "cool", but when it doesn't work in Firefox or Safari or Opera, they're shooting their own foot. I realize its a beta, so the slowness doesn't bother me. I'm not a fan of the UI either... and I especially hate the scrolling mechanism. What ever happened to a simple, easy to use, search engine that returns good results? Oh wait, that's google.

  • Too lame (Score:2, Funny)

    by GerbilSocks ( 713781 )
    I think Microsoft hired monkeys to build and design this site. It's utter and total crap!
  • A search engine that I have to enable javascript for? No thanks.

    It bugs me when companies try to treat the internet as some sort of giant application server. The internet is great at serving up hypertext documents. Emulating a desktop app?...not so much.

    BTW, terrible design with the "scrollbar".

  • Results of a 1 of search comparison

    I searched "WoW macro useItem"
    Both Google and Windows Live suggested "WoW macro use Item"

    Windows Live returned 14 hits
    Google returned about 491

    Windows Live included 3 commercial links.
    Google returned no commercial links.

    Two of the commercial links were for sites selling bugs, hacks and exploits which when used are violations of the TOS and EULA you agree to when using the game.

    Thanks Microsoft for promoting violation of EULA agreements. We know where you stand on this.
  • The search results themselves seem fine so the search algorithm looks to be, at least to me, acceptable. But the search results list itself is horrible. There's no scrollbar to speak of, so there's no way to quickly drag up and down through the list. Use the buttons on the right to go up and down by clicking (or dragging for autoscroll), or your scroll wheel, but that's it.

    Might be nitpicking, but then again just because you CAN do fancy interface crap like this doesn't mean you SHOULD, especially when i

  • Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by harvardian ( 140312 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:52AM (#14875431)
    Disclaimer: I used to work for MSN (this disclaimer will soon be ironic, though)

    I just loaded up live.com and searched for myself. Decent results, whatever...search sites don't usually wow me any more. Then I click on the "images" tab and...both of my Firefox windows just disappear.

    I am very amused that Microsoft found a way to crash Firefox on RH4.

  • Prolly WORST NAME EVER (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:53AM (#14875439)
    Here's some contenders, and the clear winner:
    • HyperCard: People call: "I want that plug-in hyper card". Sorry Maam, it's not hardware, it's software. "Then why is it a card?". Card here refers to like a 3x5 file card. "So it's a recipe program". No, it's more of a free-form user-friendly database.
    • Adobe Illustrator '88: Funny, sales dropped off in 1989.

    But the clear winner: Windows Live

    So it's got something to do with Windows(R)? Nope. Nothing that I can see. It's a web server that can be called up by Mac's, Suns, Crays, etc... No windows in those.

    So the "Live" business it's:

    • Their latest hot Windows patches? No
    • Live music. No.
    • Live links. No, the links could be weeks old.
    • Live ANYTHING? Nope.

    IMHO The Worst Name Ever

  • Ooh (Score:3, Informative)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:53AM (#14875444)
    Wow, Google must be really quaking in their boots about this. The page looks like a textbook example on how not to design an AJAX page. Apart from the apparent performance problems:

    - Why use custom widgets? Does Windows not include a scrollbar widget?
    - Why is the custom scrollbar completely broken? Why does the scrollbar not indicate how far through the search results I am? Why can I not drag it easily?
    - Why smooth scroll?
    - Why are none of the 'links' on the page actual links? If you use Javascript links like that, middle-click to open in new window/tab doesn't work.
    - Why is their a speech-bubble like thing partially covering the search window
    - Why do I have to click on a zoom icon in order to search? Oh, you mean a circle with a line coming out of it means "search"? Why not write "search" on the button, then?

    • It's not a scrollbar (Score:3, Interesting)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )
      It's a new UI paradigm I have not seen before. It's a dragbar that takes you through the search results, which are streamed from the server in real time as you drag. No more paging through search results. I think it is a novel idea.

      PS the Page Up / Down and Home keys work too, as well as your scrollwheel.

      Once you realize it is not a scrollbar and actually try it a bit you'll see hwo cool it is.

      Also try the 'Add To My Live" button, tres cool. The image search is also blowing Google's away.

  • I knew this would happen (Score:3, Insightful)

    by danpsmith ( 922127 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @11:04AM (#14875581)
    I was wondering when companies were going to figure out that if you wanted people to buy new computers to browse the web and read e-mail you have to make the web more complicated. Now thanks to Google and Microsoft, the battle of the Internet bloat war will ensue, and finally there will be a use for the average Joe to buy a dual-core processor with 2gb of ram: browsing the Web 2.0 (TM)!

  • No, the most horrible Scroll Bar ever!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheSkepticalOptimist ( 898384 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @11:51AM (#14876112)
    I can't stand those scroll bars that recenter themselves after you scroll. Google Picasa uses them, and I guess someone at Microsoft ripped off the idea. They are a pain in the ass and counter intuitive, especially considering you can tell how far down the list you are. While I know that Microsoft gets rid of the Page 1 2 3 4 5... links by using this method, it still is not a very well implemented control.

    What I don't think Search engines get is that if you list more then 20 results your doing nobody a favour. How often have you searched for something and then actually scrolled or navigated to the 100th results page to click on the 10,003rd link? If you don't find what your looking for in the first 10 - 20 search results then you need to narrow your search, or the search engine has to become a little more selective in the results it returns. Listing millions of search results is just dumb.

    I would applaud a search engine that only ever returned the top 10 links of a search. It can still have a link to list the millions of other search results, but it only gives you the top 10 links in a concise set of results. I just think that Google and MSN are trying to out do each other by listing as many search results as possible, to demonstrate who has the bigger....index, but this does nobody good.

    Its time to bring some quality into search engine results and stop this need for large quantity search results. Then at least they can get rid of that God awful scroll bar as you would never need it.

  • Microsoft Is Getting A Clue (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thelizman ( 304517 ) <[moc.oohay] [ta] [kcattaremmah]> on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:14PM (#14876342) Homepage
    I did a search for "linux". Got relevent results. Did a search for "microsoft sucks" and got Microsuck.com. Will they replace google? Not today. But they're finally off to a decent start.

  • Degrading. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by loyd86 ( 806552 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @12:58PM (#14876806)
    Have you every tried to go to googles website with javascript turned off. Everything degrades properlly and is still usable. Try to use this search with javascript turned off and it utterly flounders.

  • vocabulary (Score:5, Funny)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @03:41PM (#14878296) Homepage Journal
    I'm not sure if that's the dynamicness (is that a word?)...

    Yes, don't worry, it's a perfectly cromulent word. Here's an example sentence: "The dynamicness of the Live search engine embiggens its search ability."

    (BTW, am I the only one who has added 'cromulent' to their spellcheck dictionary?)

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