MSN Search Has Arrived

strikehosting writes "The new MSN Search, "the first-ever search engine built from the ground up by Microsoft", has been launched worldwide. It will be available in 25 markets and 10 languages. A few features though, like MSN Music and 'Search Near Me', are available only in the United States. Sporting a cleaner look and a simplified layout, MSN Search has a more prominent position on the home page. The features that are available here include tabs that allow consumers to target searches to the Web, news, images, music, desktop or Microsoft Encarta."

Why?

[pnewhook]

Can't see what this would possibly give over Google or other great search engines. What possible benefit could Microsoft give to this that is not already there? Why bother reinventing the wheel, except for the purpose of desktop domination?

First post?

Thats good and all, but...

[Skraut]

They just don't get it. The reason people use Google is because it loads fast and just works. It doesn't take forever to load with flash animations, and other crap no one needs. When you want to search you go to Google. If you want to be bombarded with media and advertisements there are plenty of other sites on the internet.

Good thing!

[salvorHardin]

I know people keep posting stuff along the lines of "oh deary me... this might kill Google", but no. It doesn't have to. MSN Search may take market share away from Google, but the people using it will be the ones who haven't figured out how to change the default search in IE, or set the homepage to something other than MSN. So, Google will hopefully become a search engine for the clueful, whilst the AOLers and WebTV people use MSN search.

Too much stuff.... no content

[sanosuke001]

Too much on the page that I don't care about. They're trying to sell their image and them trying to be flashy gets in the way. Now, I don't really like google; mainly because people use it as a verb, but at least they're not trying to cram 50 ads down my throat everytime I load the page. I don't think Microsoft will ever learn...

Indexing gone wild

[WoodstockJeff]

Given the traffic reported by many PHPBB2 operators as MSNBot endlessly spidered their sites, retrieving the same pages hundreds of times via different session IDs, I wonder how accurate their page counts are going to be on any dynamic-content site.

We had to modify our sites to remove session IDs when MSNBot comes by to cut the traffic.

Nope! Good effort - but F--

[zulux]

I still will be setting the home-page setting of all my users to www.google.com

On a 56K connection Microsoft's effort is still slow and clunky.

Re:[tt]:Encarta

[Anonymous Coward]

How can one be cluttered and the other elegant, if one is a "carbon copy" of the other?

Meythinks you are a fool!

Re:[tt]:Encarta

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you assuming that Encarta is objective? Because an "analyst" said so?

I've bookmarked it already

[SimianOverlord]

I've been using it all morning and it seems to me it's just as good, if not better than googles search. For one thing, many of the pages I'm looking for are about microsoft, such as security bulletins, windows media player download site, direct x, and so on, so its habit of magnifying these results over others is a positive boon.

Also, I make it a policy to give as few organisations as possible any data they could mine for marketing purposes, and as a windows user, I know windows already has this information, so why should I further propagate to Google, a company that likes to pretend its transparent, but does things like refusing to rule out using gmail data to refine its ad business in the future, or linking the actual pages you visit [slashdot.org], NOT just what you search for, in their profile of you.

Its an unpopular view, but in this case microsoft is just be[tter.

Why bother?

[terrencefw]

Really... why? Google's search results are good. MSNBot is pulling as many pages from my site as GoogleBot, but only bringing me 2% of the visitors that Google does.

Google has a number of advantages, like:

• Repeat the search on USENET, Images and Froogle
• No heavy graphics
• Spell checking
• Indexes and converts PDF and other formats.

Also, it returned results from the United Kingdom, even though the UK only box wasn't ticked!

Also, the layout and the sponsored links are a blatant ripoff of Google.

[tt]:Is this REALLY launched this time?

[tomhudson]

So, it it REALLY launched this time? Maybe we should ask google?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c2coff=1&safe=o ff&q=msn+search&spell=1

Results 1 - 10 of about 19,000,000 for msn search. (0.08 seconds)

... as opposed to msn search

Web Results
1-10 of 9,429,189 containing msn search (0.15 seconds)

Twice as long, half the results - nope! Google rulez.

With Microsoft, who gives a shit? Remember their "big security push"? Nothing came of it. Everyone who has a clue knows you can't just "bolt on" security in a couple of months. It was all about marketing, not product. Just like monkey-boy's "developers, developers, developers" - all hype, no content.

I've seen a hell of a lot of traffic from msnbot lately.

I checked the server logs at work yesterday, and for every legit visitor over the last 10 days there were 8 attempts to "hack in" using Winblows security holes (stupid script kiddies - why don't you at least check to see what OS is running before repeatedly trying different methods - oh, right, you're Microsnot Fanbois).

There's a LOT of msnbots (MicroSoft Nuisance roBOTs) out there.

Instead of wasting time and resources on a search engine, they should first fix their piece of shit insecure operating system. Or maybe they can use google's search engine to find a patch? Buy a clue?

What the world needs isn't a Microsoft search engine - it's for Microsoft to clean up their own mess.

Re:[tt]:Encarta

[generic-man]

You know, there were search engines that existed before Google. All of them consisted of a search box and a submit button, with a few links to change what kind of search you wanted to run.

I really can't wait until the time comes when Google is obsolete, and we instead have thousands of stories about a different company that say "OMG JHOIM INTRODUCES USENET SEARCH! WOOT!"

Re:[tt]:Encarta

[generic-man]

Everyone is biased.

Encarta is edited by professional editors, and as such it has a standard of integrity which Microsoft's customers expect.

Wikipedia is edited by bored Internet users, and as such it bears a disclaimer that it is "for entertainment purposes only."

I would much sooner trust Encarta than Wikipedia for encyclopedic knowledge, in much the same way that I'd trust any other journalistic source [nypost.com] than a bunch of bored Internet users [wikinews.org] to edit my news.

Re:Indexing gone wild

[mikeplokta]

Session IDs have to go in URLs, because there's no other way to preserve session state for users who have cookies disabled.

Re:Better results than Google?

[jdog1016]

Examples?

Re:Better results than Google?

[sangreal66]

I tried the query you suggested in MSN and got a number of very useful C# learning resources that I used in the past when I was picking up the language. Google returned sites with information on the language and comparisons. I wouldn't say either is worse than the other, they are just different. MSN also returned the Mono homepage on the first page.

Re:[tt]:Encarta

[Fallen_Knight]

frankly unless i tell a search engine to look for canadian webpages i DO NOT WANT it to go ahead and put them first.

I'm searching the WORLD WIDE WEB here not the canadian web. Sometimes its usefull but for the most part i find it a pain.

Re:Why bother?

[sycamore_days]

Why bother?
So as to increase competition and better quality products.. You know, everybody hates microsoft with plenty of valid reasons interms of their OS security, monopoly, etc.. but when they try to compete against other people, a whole gang of people try to really keep them down..

there's a strong double standard for microsoft when they try to compete.

Re:Better results than Google?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Yes, but if you spell it the US way:

"12 inches in centimeters"

MSN Search gives you the answer.

Yes, MSN Search does have that feature. It may not be as good as Google's version, but it's there.