Microsoft Claims Worlds Best Search Engine Soon 536
kw writes "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. That timing would presumably coincide more or less with the launch of Vista."
Re:I hope they do (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you remember (Score:5, Insightful)
"However - and this is big - how can Microsoft change the habits and behavior of many millions of users?"
AltaVista used to be *the* search engine a long time ago. So you could go back a few years and ask the same question about Google.
Haven't we heard this before? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they were going to have a search engine better than Google, they would just do it, not announce it 6 months in advance. What, do they think that we need to prepare for this momentous event? Like our society isn't ready for a search engine of this power yet, so they need to warn us 6 months in advance to give us time to prepare?
Stop making announcements and do it already.
Re:same trick as msn search (Score:3, Insightful)
Eh ? Windows has an _excellent_ record of being usable on older hardware. Typically if it's 5 years old or newer, it'll run the latest version of Windows either out of the box or with some very minor tweaks/upgrades.
Windows XP and 2003, for example, are quite usable on ca. 1998 PCs if they're bumped up to 512M or more of RAM. They're both usable for very basic tasks (email, word processing, simple web browsing) on ca. 1995 Pentium machines, if you really want to.
Even the current version of Linux will run on a 486.
No feature-comparable version of Linux runs on a 486 (particulary a 486 as it would have existed ca. 1994). No KDE, no GNOME, no Firefox - at least not at any sort of acceptable performance level.
DOS runs quite happily on a 25 year old PC. That doesn't make it a valid comparison to Windows XP. Neither is any version of Linux that runs acceptably on a 486.
When you look at it, windows XP doesn't really offer anything new over windows 95.
Much like Linux doesn't offer anything over DOS...
Since microsoft doesn't sell PCs, doesn't it make sense that they sell a product that works on as many PCs as possible, instead of working only on PCs made in the last 2 years?
Generally, Microsoft set their baseline machine as something that was high end ~5 years previously and mainstream ~3 years previously (since most businesses run on about a 3 year cycle). This has been true for pretty much every version of Windows ever released.
Additionally, you ignore that the vast majority of customers don't buy Windows, they buy a new PC that has Windows installed - so how well it runs on older hardware for most of their customers really is irrelevant, because they'll only ever use it on hardware that is quite capable of running it.
Re:same trick as msn search (Score:3, Insightful)
same way they can say "Spam Will Be 'Solved' In 2 Years"
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
you redefine what you really meant when you look at what you accomplished in 6 months. better could be database size, it could be speed of execusion, it could be lower % add buffer. whatever 1 (or more) area(s) msn excells at over google, will be defined as proof of better.
Re:same trick as msn search (Score:2, Insightful)
If I want to run a firewall I can do so with linux on a base standard 486 with no extra ram, or even a router, however, I can not do the same with windows XP or 2003.
That is feature-comparable to the feature I would want to use from a windows 2003 box on a router! On a router I don't care about GUI, I don't care about eye candy I care about routing traffic, the routing feature I wish to use does compare to windows 2003, but I can do it on a 486 with 16M of ram.
MS claiming that linux will not run with the same features on old machines are forgetting that in a lot of cases people are using the machines for a specific purpose they don't want the extra cruft.
Re:same trick as msn search (Score:3, Insightful)
Too many people are skimping on quality content, and spending more and more time trying to "please Google". It has just gotten to the point of silliness.
It's gotten to be a real problem. You can have crap content but come in first or second if you obsess over optimization, but if you simply concentrate on content, and not Google, you may not come up in a search.
I'll would like to see an engine that can better evaluate content, and free people up from trying to cater to one particular engine.
I use frames and PHP on some client sites that are widely regarded as the best of the informative source of information in their respective fields, but they come up on page 5 of Google, wheras some meta tag hogs with flashing banner ads and one line of text related to the topic comes in number 1 or 2.
I would like to see "Optimizing your site for Google" to become obsolete.
Re:Vista phising protection (Score:4, Insightful)
I think GP's point was how, once again, Microsoft will use their OS monopoly to compete unfairly in another market (here, search engines. somehow the concept of searching online has now become a market...)
In other words, who cares if you can turn it off? Most users won't. How many people turned off that fucking Clippy thing in Office? Not enough of em.
Re:same trick as msn search (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vista phising protection (Score:3, Insightful)
If it is a big box full of text with an 'ok' button it might as well be on by default. Doubly so if it is more than one page/frame/prompt.
How M$ will do it. (Score:1, Insightful)
The MAJORITY of users out there are STILL using M$IE. Hence, the application that has the most hits to Google is Microsoft's closed-source code M$IE. Microsoft owns the code, the desktop, and the key desktop applications (Word, Excel, (C) Microsoft in case I get in trouble). Hence they own the internal logic and control the "access" to the Internet. Much like AOL before them, they can become the "gatekeeper" to Joe SixPack's Internet experience (they now use their internal firewall and are bundling virus protection).
Own the majority of desktops, desktop applications, and desktop browsers, you can pretty much tie them together and "encourage" them to all use MSN search.... Using your monopoly in this manner is supposed to be illegal (aka a sick bird), but we know the history of DOJ versus M$. Aren't monopolies with really deep pockets great!
Better search tech not as good as NEW search tech. (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember back in the day, when I was switching from webcrawler to yahoo because of result relevancy. Then it was "metacrawler" after which I just started using google directly.
My thought around the "metacrawler" switch was that no search engine can possibly return relevant results indefinately: the scum will eventually figure out the tricks and overwhelm through sheer numbers the good sites. I resigned myself to switching engines every so often.
I had much hope for google however, as when they were first starting to become popular, they made noises like they were going to change the algorithm every so often.
So it seems they have gotten complacent, or just too big to change. All the side projects may be having an unintended consequence as well. The sheer volume of irrelevant results indicates that the algorithm is not being changed drastically or often enough to achieve the desired outcomes.
Re:The difference... (Score:3, Insightful)
More importantly, M$ regularily delivers less than was promised, later than promised. Apple quite often delivers earlier than promised (see PPC-Intel switch) and often more than promised (see MacBook Pro CPU upgrade just prior to shipping).