Comments on: Microsoft's search must begin in Redmond

After five years and hundreds of millions of dollars, the software maker still hasn't convinced its own employees to be big users of its search product.

[t8]

live.com is some sort of Google knock off right?

[mulberrybush]

Yes, and you're sort of a human knock off right?

[sanjayb]

Actually I loved t8's post. I don't they meant it to be serious. Good one!! :-)

[TV James]

Google's search results are, at best, neutral.

Microsoft's, anything, always feels overly clunky and design ugly.

[t8]

When I get a virus or other PC problems I can Google the solution. Microsoft should be happy that Google helps me with their products. How about Microsoft saying thanks to Google for helping Windows users out. Come on Steve B, put your prejudices aside and ring Eric up and thank him on behalf of me and your other Windows customers.

[mulberrybush]

Whenever I don't get a virus on my Mac or Linux box and search google and a warning about a virus comes up I do try and ring up Steve B and say 'thank you for making me choose way better more productive operating systems'. I only got through once and he tried to pretend it was a pizza delivery place, but I recognised the voice.

[jtlevin]

I think a lot of it is their name. Live Search has improved a great deal (in terms of the results being returned) in the last year. But think about the name: I'm going to live search it, I'm going to kumo it or I'm going to google it. I mean, google made its name a verb. Microsoft can't come up with anything that just rolls off the tongue. It seems like a small thing but it just isn't as easy or as intuitive as google. Every time I go to use live search I can't remember the url. It isn't intuitive that www.live.com is a url for searching the web...

[t8]

I googled life.com and some magazine appears.

[Dalkorian]

This says a lot to the thinking man. M$ can't con their own employees into using their useless search site and they can't pay others to use it either. Must be a great search engine, right? Yeah, it's a marketing problem M$. Just blow more money on commercials, that will improve your product!

ROFLMAO!

[Maccess]

"For starters, the company is reportedly planning a $100 million ad campaign to accompany a mid-year release of the product."

It's not a branding issue, so the $100 Million is a waste of money.

" Beyond that, Microsoft has been paying heavily to make its search engine the default on new computers and devices, including deals with Dell and Lenovo. "

Isn't it already the default in the Operating Sysem installed in most Dell and Lenovo computers? Microsoft would be better off pay a subsidy to them and others to make Live Search the default in Linux installations by vendors.

[IKE:)]

Microsoft should concentrate on improving their long list of faulty products.
Admittedly some products are good, but MS has rested on their worldwide monopoly for a looong time;). And just look at Vista...
With all the money they have been throwing literally out of the window, being arrogant, losing Billions of $ in US and EU, MS could have invested in next generation products, soft- and hardware.
Instead, the new CEO, who is one of the most arrogant individuals I know, is still stirring the same old soup.
Luckily for all of us, in the end the consumer will decide what is best for him/her and ARROGANCE will lose.

The reality that this story exposes is that the majority of Microsoft employees work at the company for a paycheck and healthcare benefits (the best on the planet). Clearly if Microsoft employees cared at all about the company and its products they be doing everything they can to "eat their own dogfood" as Microsoft repeatedly encourages their staff to do.

The most telling exposure from Mehdi (and I'm surprised that he revealed this) was that "Microsoft has won some internal support for specific products, such as its Live Search Cashback feature". Yet more evidence of why Microsoft employees "work" there...for the cash and prizes; clearly not to create great software products and services.

[dumbspammers]

The simple fact is that Microsoft Live Search Powered by Retarded Chipmunks (or whatever they're calling it this week) is so horribly inferior to Google that I can get a 100% first-time hit on a Micorsoft Knowledge Base article using Google, and it's closer to 30% using Live Search. That's using the KB number as the search term. What does that tell you about the quality of the MS search engine?

[128shot]

eeeeeeeeeeeh.

MS has a marketing problem, and a technical problem.

MSN live search, is a horrible name (Lets not underestimate how simple it is to say 'google', if say, their search was enquire, it would be easy to say 'enquire it', as well, ya know? its a mental thing)

Also, Live is sluggish, and often doesn't hit what you're looking for. They need to improve (or buy someone who has improved) search engine technology.

What i never understood (or more precisely, never will understand) is why MS relies so heavily on doing everything internally.

sometimes, its more fruitful to buy into ventures, or buyout another company, that does something you may do, better.

[mulberrybush]

"It is an awesome keyword-to-URL-mapper," Mehdi said, referring to the search engine of today. "What it is not well suited for is cases where you are looking for more than just a URL, (if) you are looking to get some insight or you want to actually make a decision. Our interpretation of the data is there is a lot of unmet need."

This is just a nonsense paragraph. If he wants to say 'semantic web', and he knows the term, then just say it, and also mention that Microsoft is only just starting to play catch-up on the ill-conceived ideas that the phrase promises.

As for 'Our interpretation of the data is there is a lot of unmet need' - someone should mention THAT he is missing a crucial word THAT would make THAT sentence so much easier to read, and possibly to parse by his imaginary semantic web processing engine.

Then again could just be inaccurate verbatim, like the rest of the article.

[mulberrybush]

Maybe people who use Live Search also are using Internet Explorer (it's pretty much the default home page isn't it?). And maybe Internet Explorer doesn't have a decent Adblock or the equivalent, and maybe this means the results are even worse than they expect?

[mulberrybush]

Hey, I just did a search on this page, and not a single post mentions the word 'algorythm' which is the key issue, Google happened to pick the right algorythm at the right time for search, and implemented it quickly and sweetly, along with a few nice back-end tricks which made it workable. Hence the success.

This is something that MS cannot just buy or create even with a team of talented programmers - the right algorythm at the right time by the right people.

How long has google got? Until the next better algorythm comes along and gets implemented, probably using MS or possibly existing Google's instantly obsoleted data centres.

My bets would be on a relatively completely unknown person/group of people coming up with this code. MS, judging by their products, proprietary stance and litigiousness just isn't in the running. Google? Who knows, but they're king of the hill at the moment.

[jkohut]

As a long time user of Microsoft's search capability on it's own Knowledgebase, it is no wonder to me that Microsoft search is not used by many. I use Google to search Microsoft's Knowledgebase because Microsoft's search doesn't find articles. If they can't search well INTERNALLY , how do they expect to be a good search for external data?

[ryan_t_moreau]

You people who claim that Google is the number one search engine on the web just because of the fact that it has a clever name that?s easy to remember are out of your minds. Does it hurt to have a simple name, that's easy to remember? Of course not, it's a very large part of their success, but not the singular reason they are what they are today. Do yourselves a favor and watch the A&E Biography on Google, or any other Google-opic out there and you'll see that the reason Google is the best search engine around, and that no one else can compete with them is a series of complex algorithms they used when creating it which narrow search results down better than anyone, and yield better results - quicker - for their users. The algorithms and programming behind the Google name is so secret it's vaulted and never seen by anyone but the top minds in the company.

Make no mistake; Google is not just a cute logo and catchy name. The Google creators knew their stuff then, and have some of the best and brightest minds in the business working behind their brand now. It's far too easy to get caught up in your success and let other people catch up and overtake you. There is something to be said for becoming number one at what you do and showing sustainability for years after by constantly improving your product or service - even if it?s behind the scenes. To assume their dominance is some sort of fluke due to their marketing alone, and nothing to do with the technology behind it is ignorant.

Am I saying Google is always going to be number one? That they are impossible to overthrow? Not at all - I'm saying quite the opposite. It just takes another person or team of people with the drive, ambition and smarts that Google had to do the same and become the best, but it sure won't be easy.

Maybe instead of jumping blindly into a topic you know little about, some of you should research a little before hand.

Want to learn more about the genius that went into the success of the company and their continued success? I'd suggest a quick Google search and a little more reading.

[Fil0403]

If people should admire Google for being a leader in Internet search for little more than 5 years and should research and "learn more about the genius that went into the success of the company and their continued success", then they I can only imagine the admiring, research, and learning they have to pay to Microsoft (especially regarding Win).

[Fil0403]

Google Search > Yahoo! Search > Live Search

P.S. Regarding all the discussion regarding whether or not Google is a monopoly: stop being biased hipocrits, of course Google is a monopoly (at least regarding Internet search) - even if not a technical one, since there are alternatives -, or else I don't know what you call when a company has 80+ % of the market (the 64.2 % figure is regarding the US market alone, there is more world beyond the US in case you haven't noticed); Google is practically as much a monopoly with Google Search as Microsoft is with Win (they even have almost the same market share in their respective markets [80+ %]).

[Mezzrow]

Who the hell is Taylor Swift?

[hsalvi]

Google is Number one for one Reason because they will find out everything pirated compared to any other search engine. People like to get things for Free instead of buying and that is Killing World's economy. To Search Torrents and other pirated stuff Google is best place to go and search for google is bigger promoter of piracy and they will remain as they know that if they start blocking Search Results with Pirated items. they will start lossing market share as I do not see any benefit of using Google and for me google is last search engine & even I use the forgotten search engine altavista sometimes.