Microsoft vs. Google Round 2: Windows Live Search Beta
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If at first you don’t kill Google, try again. Renovating MSN Search didn’t work too well last time, but Microsoft is ready to give it another shot now by reworking the engine and repackaging it in Windows Live Search. The beta brings more original features and tools to the market this time, so is there is a possibility it will be a big guy soon.
Thanks to just being released into beta, we can see the highlights of Microsoft’s newest little engine that could. After that, we can take a look at the chances that this new market position will sway enough users to switch, and what this could generally mean to future optimization efforts.
Before getting into the details, it would be best to mention how Microsoft is moving its MSN branding to Live branding. The company is in the process of pulling its search engine and Hotmail out of the web portal and placing them on Live.com. The new site is Microsoft’s central location for web services, from personalized home pages to web-based versions of Office software. It’s pretty significant that they have chosen to pull apart the MSN brand that they have worked so hard to build, but moving the new search engine into Windows Live has some obvious benefits that will make their engine more powerful and useful.
The search engine is already offering the option to store search criteria and place it on your personalized homepage as a feed. Windows Live Search will probably soon be integrated into the collaborative web features that Microsoft is building. Users might be able to search their storage of Office Live files and Hotmail emails from the engine. If Microsoft starts offering storage features like Google has been doing, those files will probably become search material too. Not all of the potential has been tapped yet, but the entire site is still a beta.
It has still started offering new features not found in Google. Last time MSN renovated the engine, it turned out to be more or less an imitation of Google. This time, with their creativity going into it, we could see something better. CNN spoke to Yusuf Mehdi, Sr. VP of information services at MSN, who said:
"A lot of people think, 'Hey, ... Didn't Google become the popular search engine? And don't they just do a great job? And there's no room for improvement."' Mehdi said. Once people get a feel for Windows Live Search, Mehdi said, "They're going to say, 'Holy cow, I had no idea that search could get this much better!"'
So is Microsoft making search that much better? The product might not be done, but it will give us a good idea.
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