Microsoft Hopes to Crush Google - Microsoft Takes on Google
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After hopping over to the MSN Search site (http://search.msn.com/), you’ll notice the interface really looks like a Google XP. It is very minimalist: a little corporate branding at top, some search engine features linked under the brand, a search bar, and a few other web services linked at the bottom. This is clearly emulating Google’s clean interface and departing from MSN’s normal barrage of clutter and ads.
Most of Microsoft’s search features are new or in beta, and some don’t even appear on the home page. It's not quite as robust and user friendly as Google yet.
For instance, MSN has a shopping engine (http://shopping.msn.com) to compete with Froogle (http://froogle.google.com), which is not linked on the search page. Of course, the shopping feature isn’t very useful yet; it returned only a tiny fraction of the results Froogle did for the PC parts I searched (some specific AMD processors and DDR memory). I don’t know why Microsoft would want to keep the shopping search separate from their MSN Search, but they may be waiting until it’s more useful to integrate it into the search suite.
Besides emulating Google’s interface and shopping search, MSN has included an image search and a local search, coming into direct competition with some of Google’s central features. Doing a few quick local searches, the interface here is also very similar, right down to the color scheme Microsoft chose matching Google’s color scheme. The only notable thing that MSN Search changed was that it added a bunch of undesired web results below the local search, which is the clutter of MSN showing through.
Related to the local search is Microsoft's debuted Virtual Earth. The Virtual Earth is obviously a response to Google Map's satellite imagery.
MSN Search’s image search also resembles Google’s; after clicking through a results page of image thumbnails, it shows the image in one frame and the source site in another other frame. It would be nice to see a little more design creativity from Microsoft. When their site resembles Google so much, it achieves no distinction.
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