Microsoft To Launch Homegrown Search Engine

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "While Google is currently the king-of-the-hill in search engines, Microsoft continues to lag in market share and uses Yahoo's technology/results. But Cnet reports that they'll launch on Thursday their own homegrown search engine , although it appears this is mostly a face-lift (despite a year of development and $100 million investment). According to Bill Gates, they 'will introduce a homegrown web crawler and algorithmic search engine ... later this year,' which is almost certainly their tech preview (you can look at this now) -- but will that be ready for prime-time in less than two months?"

About time

[lightdarkness]

I've seen their cralwer (their new one I presume) around for at least a month, without any indication on where the results were being shown. At least I have another spider to add to my list of robots that steal my bandwidth.

So

[jbartone]

Who's actually going to use this instead of Google?

Last Post...

[Anonymous Coward]

... for Google?

Search for Windows.....

[alistair]

No Results Found

Needs some fine tuning before it's ready for the prime time, me thinks.

the word preview...

[Jimmy The Tulip]

Instead of using words like "alpha" or "beta" they are using a word "preview". i dont know what that means ?
btw, the font in which "search tech preview" is written and the color and the shadow..sucks!

Prediction for most popular queries on day 1...

[seanellis]

"mozilla firefox" download
google

Algorithmic search engine? WTF?

[jagripino]

Don't *all* search engines have to have, hmm, some kind of algorithm in them?

Marketing speak confuses me! Please stop!

Tech Preview?

[beders]

No results for my name or a random word. More worryingly no result for "porn". Got a long way to go chaps, $100 million seems a little steep for a input box linked to an error page...

Dutch?

[tompercival]

Fantastic... dutch search results - just what I was after too.

Biased

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they are not biased Click Here [msn.com]

Re:So

[zakezuke]

Since it'll probably end up being default start-up page in IE, lots.

Fortunately IE has enough in the way of exploits so the default start-up page gets hijacked often enough.

The best part of all...

[Anonymous Coward]

is that when I searched for "Windows XP crack" it found a great page about an underground piracy ring called the SPA, they even gave me a number to call 1-800-388-PIR8. Thanks Microsoft!

Best search engine

[Libor Vanek]

Just try to search "best search engine" and enjoy what comes out:
http://www.search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=SRCHWB &q=best%20search%20engine [msn.com]

Re:Microsoft's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhhh. Microsoft blowing 100s of millions of dollars that will gain them nothing is exactly what is required.

The more targets they have to aim at, the more it will drain them.

Re:Algorithmic search engine? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the new Brute Force Search Engine (TM) I'm working on.

Re:About time

[b374]

Is this [slashdot.org] their crawler?

Re:Search engine wars

[northcat]

It seems that Microsoft might just be trying to cut in on the business that Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves and all those other engines are making.

No, Bill Gates is just trying to impress his wife. "Look at my search engine honey, search for 'bill gates nude'. I bet you have never seen THAT before!"

Re:Doubtful this will take any ground.

[Anonymous Coward]

I say it time and time again.. Microsoft is not a company of innovation

For the love of Pete, have you forgotten about Clippy? I mean before Clippy, how many bug-eyed talking paper clips did you know?

Re:So

[Titusdot Groan]

Did your company fire them?

I've got a running gag with my team that if I can find the answer to their problem in 3 google searches I get their pay for that week. The number of dumb question I get is WAY down.

Search Results

[chia_monkey]

Oh my. I can just see the search results now:

Search entry: "Antarctic Penguin"

Search Result: A paperclip pops up on your screen and says "It appears you are searching for a penguin. Did you know Microsoft servers are cheaper to run than Linux? Would you like to buy one now?"

Re:MSN Bombs

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah, the first result for "Worst operating system" is great. That PDF book gave me a good laugh.

Microsoft compares Unix to a virus because it is small, portable, and has the ability to commandeer resources. So what Windows isn't a virus because it is bloated, only runs on the i386 architecture, and squanders resources?

Re:Search for Windows.....

[jai0]

Just searched for "where do you want to go today".. the first result was "Where do you want to go birding in Africa today?"!

Re:So

[jimicus]

This week I discovered someone in my office who knew nothing about google.

What's google?

haha

[deander2]

at the bottom of my search:

"Results 1 - 10 of about 8 containing deander2"

first off: "about 8"?!?
second, WTF? can't they check for 10 results?

how did you find such a person?

[jxyama]

>You would be amazed. This week I discovered someone in my office who knew nothing about google.

i imagine you had to use google to find such a rare person? :P