Microsoft To Launch Homegrown Search Engine 300
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?"
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
One word why Microsoft will fail (Score:1, Insightful)
lack of trust (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past, it has been shown that Microsoft blocks search results that are contrary to its own business interests.
W3C page for HTML nowhere in the first 20 results (Score:2, Insightful)
If their past strategy is any guide... (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks just like google (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Release a sub-standard product which looks like the better original.
2. Rely on their massive brand penetration to increase market share.
3. Throw enough cash at something to make it worthwhile.
It irritates me that they do this - it slows the rate of internet progress down by duplicating other peoples ideas. Why not invest in google and build on what someone else has done, rather than trying to completely monopolise all areas of the internet?
Re:Microsoft's problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft's problem (Score:3, Insightful)
"Lower what prices?" you might ask. Well, Google isn't a charity. I expect Microsoft will compete with them on advertising rates and whereever else Google makes money.
The only thing that may be considered unfair about that is that Microsoft can afford to make losses for many years on this before driving Google out of business. But that's a problem everybody faces when Microsoft enters a new market.
This isn't insightful (Score:2, Insightful)
They do not need a better algorithm than Google (which is becoming increasingly gamed by shady companies and not as good as it was anyway), they just need something "good enough", like their OS is "good enough".
As for reversing the trend, Microsoft have 1) leverage in the form of their existing OS userbase (as others have mentioned, using MS search as default), 2) Massive cash surplus 3)Brand recognition. They do not have to give things away for free. They have to fight against a competitor with a larger market share, something they have done in the past quite successfully. Do not confuse the Slashdot echochamber with objective reality.
Re:Microsoft's problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The weird thing about all of this, at least to me, is that MS had a really good opportunity to get Windows into the data centre between about 1999-2002 when Linux wasn't quite there and customers were looking for a cheaper alternative than Solaris/AIX etc. They missed it because they were so busy trying to be Sony and Sun and are now compounding the problem trying to be Google. In the mean time Linux has plugged the hole and is firmly established as the low cost data centre OS of choice.
The browser war was won when Microsoft removed any value from PC based browsers (you couldn't sell them anymore since MS gave their one away for free) - but that means that you end up with something that costs you money to maintain and support for no good reason, so you don't bother, and end up with something that looks as tiered as Internet Explorer (or a very tired thing, make up your own simile). Whilst I'm sure they could make a lot of money selling advertising space on Windows (the base Goggle profit stream) I can't help feeling that customers might not like it very much. And, of course, you don't need an expensive search engine R&D project to do this, you could just say randomly change everybody's wallpaper to an advert every 5 minutes or something.
Re:Microsoft's problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Gmail and Google Desktop Search are not accidents. Hotmail is extremely popular, and with Google Desktop Search, Google has learned that people will install replacements to Microsoft's own built-in services if they are better, and if they are branded.
And the browser war was never won. That was just the browser battle. By removing value from browsers, all Microsoft did was reduce the incentive for it to update its own browser after it gained near-ubiquity. Open-source has no problem with zero value, and this is why Mozilla has no problems working tirelessly on Firefox and Seamonkey. The browser war has just begun. [slashdot.org]
Re:About time (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice and clean (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't say that this will be my first stop when searching (Google will be until they stop being the best) but often times, if my result is not in the first few pages of Google, rather than figure out the exact phrase I need to search for to find the site I am looking for, I just hit a few other engines to see if my original phrase does the trick.
I can see how this new MS search page would become stop number 2, in front of Yahoo as long as they keep it clean and light like Google is. Then I'll move along to Yahoo of Lycos or wherever.
So yeah, I think this is a good improvement for my general searching needs, but it is going to take something amazing to replace Google as my number one choice. It's sort of a brand loyalty at this point.
Re:Microsoft's problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, its their browser, why shouldnt they make the homepage their search? Moz's default is a moz branded google, how is this different?
Re:Microsoft's problem (Score:3, Insightful)
For microsoft to win the search engine war, google would have to lose it, and that's not very likely.
Re:3 bad results. (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)