M$ releases Google Rival

From

http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/01/tech...ex.htm?cnn=yes

Quote:

---

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. has unveiled the full-release version of its search engine, turning up the heat on Web search leader Google Inc.

The world's largest software maker also revamped its MSN.com Web portal to make its search engine more prominent and also tweaked the site's content and advertising to remove clutter, said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's vice president in charge of content and services at the MSN Internet division.

At stake are advertising dollars as well as bragging rights in one of the technology industry's more interesting growth areas.

"We really are about answers and not about links," Mehdi told Reuters, taking a swipe at MSN Search's nearest competitors, which also include Yahoo Inc. (Research)

"There's a huge amount of room for improvement" in online searches, Mehdi said.

To make answers to factual questions more relevant, Mehdi said MSN Search would include the full range of information contained in Microsoft Encarta, Microsoft's electronic encyclopedia.

Users will be able to get definitions, calculations, geographical and historical information, and other information, and also view encyclopedia articles and content for any two-hour session via MSN Search.

---

There's more to the article, but you get the gist...

Have to love this, while they battle each other for 'supremacy', we (the 'users'/'consumers') get the most out of it.

The net is full of information, and while they fight they're just helping us find it. ;)

I think search engines have a problem at the moment.

I'm sure that searching is not the problem. Sorting is. There is so much information, searching for certain subjects leaves you with 20 pages of very on topic information. Maybe its time that search engines can sort it for you too.

Like threaded or on pagerank or based on size, domain name, server location, language, word count maybe put in place a review system for very popular sites.

Real searches within searches? A more advanced type of interface maybe even move to something more sql command based ? Sub searches ? Offering a set of searches that are related to yours(like our related threads system)? Digest mode that offers the most essential information on a page ?

Most people probebly won't like a number of those features. But they sure could come in handy with grabbing info on school projects and stuff. Like I said i don't think finding the general information but finding that piece your looking for is becomming harder and harder simply because of the huge amounts of semi on subject info.