Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Jaydee — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:21:20 -0000

Well I think that it is good enough for me to use it and since it is already in I.E toolbar why not. I have been using it for over a month on a daily basis, I used to do all my searches with Google...Live is good! You should try it for at least few days before making a decision...

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Suhas — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:28:29 -0000

Oh I had forgotten the word 'Search' and 'Google' has replaced it in my dictionary! It'll be rather difficult to accept anything other than google, unless something truly magical is provided by any other search engine!

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Don Cruickshank — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:46:24 -0000

I have been using Live search for a month now on both my work machine and laptop. I find the results just as good quality as Google's. I've tried Google when I've been unhappy with Live's result, only to find every time that Google didn't find better results anyway.

It took me a few days to even accept Live's search results without checking the same query on Google!

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Matt Cutts — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:59:52 -0000

After reading all the comments, my personal favorite was Bat's: "MS was the first to have algebraic searches."

I can honestly say that in my years at Google, I don't think anyone has asked me for that feature, and I'm a heavy user of the calculator feature. :)

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

John K — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:33:00 -0000

Are you kidding me? Live.com is still wide open for spammers. It's easy to manipulate.

Look at the search result for [cheap fares]. It's full of bogus affiliate blogspot blogs all owned by the same person (who's probably raking in over $10k/day based on that one term alone). The technical term for this is "pwned". :)

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Abdul Aziz — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:58:17 -0000

Unless live.com can drive enough traffic (more than 85% of my traffic is from Google), I dont think it is relevant enough. If Google can, so can Live!

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Brian — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 10:42:22 -0000

Robert,

You asked what can Microsoft do to hurt Google. I'm surprised, coming from MS that you don't acknowledge the obvious: 95% of Google's customers come to the via Windows. By making search integrated into the Vista OS, defaulting to live,com and bypassing the browser, MS -- just by providing search results that are "good enough" for most customers -- can put a big dent in Google's revenue. Could be why Google is trying so desperately to diversify their product offerings beyond browser-based search.

People make such a big deal about Google Office taking aim at Microsoft's major source of income, while never acknowledging just how vulnerable Google's single source of income is.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

rputran — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 09:43:57 -0000

Its been intersting to read all of the comments. Several have mentioned this and I am not adding anything new. But I do find that the quality of results from Live Search seems better than Google. I find that I am wading through less of irrelevant sites and am getting to find things more precisely. My searches are not so much on social spaces (maps, places etc) but are more on finance related areas. I have now switched over entirely to Live Search for the last 2 months and I am happy with it.

Its wonderful to be an user and keep switching to whatever works, isnt it? Especially if you dont have a cost attached to it. :-)

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

David — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 01:48:05 -0000

I have already switched to Windows Live Video Search.
It gives me all relevant video results from ALL video services, compared to Google's Video search, which only searches Google Video(and soon I am sure YouTube).

However what kind of Search Engine only shows results from one website(their own)? Well that is what Google Video Search does.

Switched to Windows Live Video search.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

quikboy — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 00:58:30 -0000

i think live search is better than google. i would probaly only use google for like very tough searches, where you need a lot of results. but if i go to common everyday sites, then i probaly don't need google to list millions of sites that i would probaly not care about. i've also heard that google spies on what you search and do on the internet. and i kind of don't trust a company that would do that. i also like the suggested searches that they give along side your search, in case you want to be more specific. i know use live search all the time because i find it more convenient.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Ben Bodenmiller — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 00:36:09 -0000

I already made the change because it's what's used in ie7 by default and I like it better.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

WikiServerGuy — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:07:56 -0000

It is a lot better, and my default engine because I use Vista, but it still sucks because the CACHING sucks. It doesn't highlight anything, the cache fails half the time, and there's no text-only option.

Also, as mentioned in the mini-msft blog foriegn language results seems iffy.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Robert Scoble — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:01:00 -0000

Bat: I just did a search for San Francisco Sushi. I like the speed a LOT better and the formatting is better on Google. But, yeah, you're right, Live.com has largely caught up there as well. Thanks for challenging me on that.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Bat Masterson — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 14:17:42 -0000

Robert, I don't think that Google's local stuff blows away Live's at all. What are you talking about?
Can you give some examples? Or are you just regurgitating Silicon-Valley doctrine?

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

monoclast — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 09:50:22 -0000

Microsoft’s search may be "a lot better than it used to be", but it's still not quite as good as Google Search, and *both* are still grossly sub-par compared to Apple's Spotlight.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Andrew Denny — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:31:20 -0000

In IE7 I set my home page to Google and leave my search box (top right) at the default Windows Live.

Force of habit keeps me on Google but it's good to have Live as a second opinion, plus I have the other plug-in search providers.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Maurice Prather — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 23:19:33 -0000

I have completely switched over to live.com for searching. In fact, next month will be 1 year since I stopped using google on a daily basis.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

DB — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 20:12:11 -0000

"What is missing in the comparisons so far is that which is not the search. That is, I decided to launch the google page and live search, and perhaps it’s location, but the live search took ages. The fact that it did a redirect, and then the ‘front’ page has much more text and graphics to render, all that conspired to a very slow load time."

What are you talking about? This page here?

http://search.live.com

That is a bare bones page. It has less text than Google's, and while it has a couple of extra graphics, they are smaller than Google's huge logo -- I bet the number bytes works out to be similar. And sure, it does a redirect, but so does Google. I type 'google.com' and it redirects me to google.ca.

Google's page does load faster, but the difference is very very minimal. I wouldn't even ascribe it to the content of the pages. I think Google's servers farm is just faster.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Papillon — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 17:58:39 -0000

Hmm, I disagree that Google local is definitely miles better than local.live: Local.live produces miles better results for the part of the UK I live (East Anglia). Check it out! (I specially love the bird's eye view over Cambridge).

However there's certainly lots more intelligence and knowledge that needs to be developed, e.g., local live is abysmal on address searches, even for London!

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Stephane Rodriguez — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:51:43 -0000

The power of default options : IE7's default search engine is ?

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Christopher Coulter — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:34:43 -0000

Just like techie duping YouTube ain't gonna pull in any converts, so too will "making it better" not work. It's about the experience and the community per se...Google has a lot of history, offerings and hooks to keep people coming back.

But on the flipside, Google has gotten all noised-up, blog and Wiki city, it's half worthless for me. It's not really a search engine, it's an advertising engine. Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw, ok now that's a search engine...

Live seems slower than a one-legged locust...and to quote that FBI guy from 'Prison Break', the problem with being on the trail, is that you will always be behind...it always feels "me too".

Google can't do applications and UI's, Microsoft can (halfway), but should just stop trying to outdo Google, Apple and Sony, and focus on their core strengths. It really only provides for an endless source of amusement for the public and press, as you watch the geeks acting all faux cool, loaded up with a UMPC or Tablet, Microsoft Smartphone, Zune, 360 with HD-DVD add-on's, doing Windows Live tricks with a straight face even -- this while spending billions of shareholders money in never-ending futile pursuits, worshipping the Gods of Failure. Well, it also keeps Wilcox and Gartenberg gainfully employed...

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Doug — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:34:21 -0000

Google is playing to not lose. Altavista used to be the best search and then paid results messed it up. It was easy for Google to enter the search market when that happened. If Google can maintain the purity of its results it can stay in the game.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Hash — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 14:12:37 -0000

Google wins hands down for me. Why? I type in my full name and the first link is to my blog. What's so great about that? The fact that my full name appears nowhere on my blog or my profile. Try it in Yahoo or MS Live and the best I come up with is a friend's blog within the first 20 listings which has a link with my full name.

Now that's what I call impressive. Of course, it might be related to the fact that I am on Blogger, but it is still impressive.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Kevin — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 13:53:34 -0000

For me, it's going to near impossible to switch more than 50% of my searches away from google. The reason is that my brain is just wired to type www.google.com when I want to search. Also, as a firefox user, I am used to using the search box, which defaults to google.

That said, recently, I have made about 1/3 of my searches on live.com. The reason is that the results are very good, but often significantly (and usefully) different than google.

I would say that live.com would be a huge success if they could reach 25% search share.

Re: Microsoft’s search a lot better than it used to be

Robert Scoble — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 13:47:15 -0000

Bat: I definitely trust Google. I've done 10s of thousands of searches on it and it behaves consistently and quickly. That builds my trust of what it'll bring back and do for me.