Microsoft To Launch 'Question' Site

prostoalex writes "Microsoft will try to make the search process more social, Business Week reports, by creating a question-and-answer Web site. They certainly are entering a quite crowded niche." From the article: "It's one of the many ways that Web companies, including Yahoo and Google, are trying to set themselves apart with social search, a targeted pursuit of information that's influenced by the preferences of a person's peer group. Social search is a method whose time has come, Osmer says. Microsoft research shows that generic search engines can't answer 50% of queries asked, he says. The new tool, whose name he didn't disclose, will be 'one of the larger projects for us' this year, Osmer says."

You want answers?

[mrowton]

This [20q.net] has always been the best place to ask questions.

Now thats a good idea

[jlebrech]

but will it have the linux HOWTOs.

umm...it's time has come?

[padriec]

Haven't librarians been doing this since time out of mind? I don't see what all the hoopla is about. Ask a librarian and you'll get good, timely, factual information and a lot of it. Ask one of these services and I shudder to think what you'll get.

Innovation

[munehiro]

Not to be a Redmond basher (well... I am).... but are they going to produce something innovative sometimes?
Because it seems that microsoft shut down the R&D department so long ago. Or maybe they never had one...
Probably they have a C&P department... who knows?

Filtering is the problem, not the answer.

[expro]

The filtering and social assumptions in searches seems to be the problem, not the answer.

Under Google's leadership, real raw search capabilities have regressed, and we are supposed to be happy with Google interpreting a simple search in a way that supposedly makes most searchers happy (happy compared to what?).

IMO, before further filters and dumbing-down are useful, you need a powerful basic search engine that allows you to ask advanced search questions.

Of course, this sort of open capability of search engines might reduce Google's proprietary control of the searches.

What if you could do a honest search that did not factor in the prior popularity of the site, but relied on other criteria, so that a new site with unique content might have a chance of getting found? What if you could make advanced characterizations of the sort of content you were looking for? What if any third party could make these characterizations for you so there could be competition in usage of the dominant search engines -- for example a better Froogle produced by just formulating advanced Google searches for users.

yahoo's answer

[escay]

Yahoo's answers [yahoo.com] service is very neat - large community, quick replies and decent indexing. it's, AFAIK, the model solution for social search where you can ask arbitrary questions with no efficient formatting and still get results (if not a definitive answer) - because, let's face it, software (search engines) hasn't evolved to the level of understanding that a human has.

I Dunno, I've had Good Results with Google

[Greyfox]

It doesn't always work butI find that if you enter a plain english question as your google search, it often gives you better results than trying to think up the right keywords. I've tried it for questions as mundane as "Where can I find a breakfast burrito in boulder colorado?" to ones as esoteric as "Why does asparagus make my pee smell funny?" Sometimes you'll find out something suprising. Like it turns out there are a rather a lot of people who ask that second question.

A lot of beginners have problems coming up with good search terms, so I usually tell someone just starting out that they should try entering a plain english question before they try to get too fancy with their searches.

Honest Filtering Works.

[twitter]

IMO, before further filters and dumbing-down are useful, you need a powerful basic search engine that allows you to ask advanced search questions. Of course, this sort of open capability of search engines might reduce Google's proprietary control of the searches.

You are entitled to your opinions, but most people think Google's Pagerank [wikipedia.org] goes a long way to forfilling Google's mission, to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The system does allow for "advanced search question" of course and most people get what they are looking for. Numerous attempts to manipulate the results have failed, as should be obvious every time you pull up a page of results that's not covered with porn and other spam.

Microsoft's search results and filtering practices have been questioned before [slashdot.org]. Their mission is to make as much money as possible by any means. Their results are generally filtered along those lines, which further reduces the value of their already inferior algorithms. Even if M$ were allowed to use better algorithms or invented one superior to Pagerank, their basic nature would ruin it. An astroturfer like M$ is going to try and turn everything into it's own advertisement and you can never trust anything they do.

Yes, Google has a patent on it's algorithm and software patents are bad. The control Google has over Pagerank, however, does nothing to reduce the quality of results.

What if you could do a honest search that did not factor in the prior popularity of the site, but relied on other criteria, so that a new site with unique content might have a chance of getting found?

You do realize that you can find "unpopular" and "undiscovered" sites on Google by starting on page 20 of the results, don't you? When you have 100,000 sites to work with, you can be sure that you have not heard of 99,990 of the results.