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Google sucks just as bad as microsoft now. They have rewired their search engine so that $$ rules.
Microsoft Launches Home-Grown Internet Search Service
Microsoft launches its own Internet search engine and a multi-million-dollar marketing campaign meant to draw the attention of consumers away from its top rivals Yahoo and market leader Google.
Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday launched its own Internet search engine and a multi-million-dollar marketing campaign meant to draw the attention of consumers away from its top rivals Yahoo Inc. and market leader Google Inc.
The new search service, available on the homepage of MSN, replaces Yahoo as the search engine for Microsoft's entertainment portal. Along with the launch, the MSN homepage has been redesigned to offer a simpler layout and a cleaner look and feel.
Microsoft has lagged behind its three biggest compe ors in search. The company, however, plans to catch up fast through a major advertising blitz that's expected to cost 10s of millions of dollars, the Wall Street Journal reported. Microsoft has already spent $100 million to develop and market its Internet search business.
Microsoft said it expects to reach at least 90 percent of the consumers in the United States and several hundred million globally through its marketing campaign, which will include advertising on television, the web and print.
Marketing for Microsoft is pivotal because most web surfers have already fallen into a habit of using a particular search engine or two, and need to be enticed to change their behavior.
"The challenge is not only getting people to the site and getting them to use it once, but, to a certain degree, changing their habits," Gary Price, search analyst for SearcEngineWatch.com, said. "People are creatures of habit and they tend to do things a certain way and use what they've become familiar with."
As an example of how difficult it may be to get people to switch, a nationwide survey of search-engine users by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 87 percent have successful search experiences most of the time today, including 17 percent who said they always find the information for which they are looking.
Most of the features on Microsoft's search engine are also available on compe ors' offerings. The company, however, has added a feature that uses the Microsoft Encarta digital encyclopedia to provide answers to questions, such as "who is Abraham Lincoln," as opposed to gathering results based on keywords.
"This is the infancy, or even pre-infancy, of search engines becoming answer engines for certain types of factual questions," Price said.
Nevertheless, one important area Microsoft will have to catch up in is local search, a major focus of its compe ors, particularly Yahoo.
"Of the three, Yahoo's local search is the best," Price said.
Over the last six months, Yahoo has made significant improvements, including the addition of traffic information to its online local map service.
Local search holds strong revenue potential for search engines, since many web surfers look for products and services near their home or in cities they're visiting. In general, however, local search draws the most complaints from consumers, who often find that the results don't match their needs, according to web performance tracker Keynote Systems Inc.
Another area of fierce compe ion is in desktop search. All three rivals have released beta software that can be downloaded to the desktop and used to search files in a person's PC, as well as the web. The tools are viewed as important among search companies because people often begin web surfing with a search engine.
Microsoft on Tuesday also refreshed the beta of its desktop search utility with several enhancements that include faster indexing of email file attachments.
http://www.informationweek.com/story...cleID=59300269
P.S.
Sorry, ducks.
Google sucks just as bad as microsoft now. They have rewired their search engine so that $$ rules.
Fat chance on that one.
Google is a staple of American computer lexicon now. , it's not just a web site, it's a *verb*.
I don't see Microsoft cutting into Google or anyone else's share, there's quite a movement afoot to go away from MS products as much as possible, especially with the proliferation of virii, spyware, etc. that takes advantage of MS products.
I say within two weeks there will be a security flaw in MS's search engine. Hackers hate them that much.
website deseigners can not figure out google
msn is starting to take a bit out google and yahoo
msn has the money to do so to
bill gates is just one greedy idiot
I've tried it out and it seems like a good search, just as fast as google. I'll probably use it just to spite the Microsoft-haters.
google is my homepage
Of course Gates isn't going to idly stand by when his main compe ion (Firefox) has google toolbar installed by default and google search as the default startup page.
AOL uses Google as the default search engine too....
On the computer, I do everything through google.
On my phone, it's easier to go through yahoo because whatever I need, they have it saved and I can search for addresses, numbers, and maps easily.
But if MS can beat them, I'd try it out.
I still don't understand all the hate for Microsoft. I guess when you're on top..everybody wants to bring you down.
MS has made it really hard for smaller companies in the past, thats a big reason people don't like them.
I wonder if it has to do with their non-compe ive business practices, or the fact that if you won't sell them code or an algorithm that they like, they'll just steal it. Ask Apple or the original authors of the doublespace utility.I still don't understand all the hate for Microsoft.
You don't hate the idea that your data won't belong to you, but to Gates? Dude has made it illegal to read formats like Word in other editors and keeps changing the formats to try to force into buying new, overpriced software to do the exact same . I can't understand paying $195 for a freaking text editor.
You don't like that as a monopoly Microsoft can make ty products and still control the market? Look at Internet Explorer. When Netscape was in the picture 7 or 8 years ago during the huge browser wars Microsoft busted their asses to make Internet Explorer an excellent product that was IMO the best of the time period and a huge improvement over Navigator and Communicator. Then Netscape pretty much died off and M$ gives us nothing with their browser. It's full of horrible security holes that compromise the operating system itself because it's so tightly integrated.
BTW, the dance gif wastes 1.8MB of bandwidth and RAM for everyone who has the misfortune of seeing it.
My main hatred for them is that their products are ty and that their operating systems are designed to be as non-modular as possible, thus meaning a little screw-up in one area affects the whole freaking thing.
You know, I was going to ask "WTF was that all about....?"
I still don't understand the appeal of animated gif and why it has caught on on the web. Every single frame of an animated gif is stored in its entirety, and on video there's absolutely no compression unless you want to drastically reduce the quality of the picture. MPEG-1,2, and 4 are so much more efficient and don't waste the bandwidth animated gif does.
GIF only works for large areas of the exact same color, so you either drastically reduce the number of colors (making the picture ty and creating a lot of artifacts) or you just don't compress and render it like a bitmap. MPEG is based on JPEG, which takes a few samples and uses a Fourier Transform to reproduce a continuous color spectrum (ie, millions of colors in the same or less amount of data than it takes for thousands in gif). Plus, MPEG only stores maybe 1 out of 10 or 1 out of 20 frames in entirety (by entirety I don't mean as gif does, similar to a bitmap but as compressed jpeg instead) since most frames are pretty similar to the ones before it. Instead only differences are stored and then arithmetically coded.
Last edited by baseline bum; 02-03-2005 at 02:58 PM.
But choosey moms choose gif!
No doubt I could not stand to ever see that gif again. Good thing for Adblock I don't ever have to.
FF Extensions ADblock
Let's see...I still don't understand all the hate for Microsoft. I guess when you're on top..everybody wants to bring you down.
* Anti-compe ive business practices
* Buys out threats, if they can't they just rip off the code
* Anytime anyone comes out with anything innovative, they steal it, make it a Windows feature, put the company out of business
* All their sorry ass proprietary formats that they won't let anyone else provide readers for
* The tag team of XP and IE are probably the most insecure pieces of software ever made
* 75% of all email is Spam. 90% of computers connected to the Internet have Spyware on them. MS has done nothing to deal with either of these problems, despite claiming to be the industry leader.
In short, they lie, they cheat, they steal, and they make ty products. Gee, why would people ever dislike them?
About the only quality products they make are keyboards and mice.
I feel the same about Wal-Mart....
the problem is they have the money and when you buy a name brand computer they pay the name brand computers to put msn exployer, windows media player and their junk
the name brand companies are finnally loading people's computer with I -tunes now.
but before it was always bill gates stuff.
and if his software was not vunable to virus I would not have as much problem with him
I like programs
file maker pro ( access)that work on either a mac or windows
I don't give a how much bandwidth and RAM it takes up. I just think it's funny.
Of course you don't, because you don't pay to host this forum.
You can also turn off signatures in this very forum!
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