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Microsoft Debuts Windows Live Search

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

March 8, 2006, 12:19 PM

Microsoft early Wednesday took the wraps off an improved Live.com homepage complete with a beta of Windows Live Search, the successor to MSN Search. The Redmond company expects the new site to seriously challenge Google's dominance in the search market.

Windows Live Search utilizes advanced Web features to create a dynamic search experience. For example, users can preview search results on the site, adjust a slider bar to reveal more information on a result, and a "smart scroll" feature to display results without moving from page to page.

Microsoft's new search technology also scours more Web content, including blogs, RSS feeds and e-mails. The company also rolled out a new image search that features infinite scrolling, thumbnail-image-sizing customization, filmstrip view and the ability to see the full image without leaving the results page.

Windows Live Search is additionally linked up with MSN Shopping and MSN Spaces to provide integrated search results from those MSN properties. Other Windows Live services, such as Messenger and Mail, will feature the same search capabilities built in.

Customization plays a major role in the new search engine, Microsoft says. A feature called "Search Macros" enables users to save and share specific queries and search scopes. For example, a search could be limited to only a users favorite Web sites rather than the entire Internet.

A handful of Macros are currently available on Windows Live Search, and Microsoft plans to release a beta tool in the near future to enable creation of new Macros.

Live.com itself has also been bolstered with new themes, support for multiple pages based on interest, along with new and updated Gadgets. Gadgets are mini-applications that can run either in the Windows Vista Sidebar or on Live.com directly.

"We have done a tremendous amount on our infrastructure; live.com was built on our start.com incubation infrastructure. With this launch we've deployed a scaleable, geofederatable, higher performance backend which we're looking forward to growing in to," the Live.com team wrote on its Web log.

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By netean

posted Mar 11, 2006 - 6:48 AM

a perfect example of style over content and usability. On my PC (dialup - can't get broadband where I Live). The loading screen site there for literally about 2 minutes. Search results just never appear (Using Opera), all I get is "loading"

why use AJAX when standard, quick html would have worked so much better and quicker.

Google, Yahoo, Ask, etc all work in all browsers (even on my mobile phone) I can't even use windows Live search on my windows computer.!

Score: 0

By PC Rat

edited Mar 11, 2006 - 5:12 PM

...

"On my PC (dialup - can't get broadband where I Live). The loading screen site there for literally about 2 minutes. Search results just never appear (Using Opera), all I get is 'loading'..."

...

On the PC Rat's high-speed cable connection it's still s-l-o-w. This is a code problem ...~not~ an Internet problem.

And it won't load at all in Opera.
...

The Computer Rodent

...

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Mar 13, 2006 - 12:59 AM

Man... it really scares me sometimes how The PC Rat refers to himself in the third-person.

Dang... now you've got me doing it.

Score: 0

By cranbers

posted Mar 11, 2006 - 12:03 AM

I tried the search, I was not impressed. I imagine it will be better when it's fully released but, a google killer? Come on, you can't beat google's dominance in their own domain, anymore then another os could in microsoft's. They tried before, and they failed miserably. Just another way to claim they are inovating probably.

Score: 0

By teken894

posted Mar 10, 2006 - 7:15 PM

OMG. the space where results appear is puny. and HATE the scroller bar! can't event drag it to quickly go from result 100 to 1.

Good dynamic features, but too much graphics and stuff for a simple search engine. SIMPLE being the keyword--which Live.com lacks

The ideas and features are good, but way too much graphics/waste space

Score: 0

By patmc7

posted Mar 9, 2006 - 10:15 AM

When I bring up the page I get a "loading" message that seems to last forever. And it won't search for anything. It appears to be broken at the moment.

Score: 0

By rcontra

posted Mar 9, 2006 - 12:44 PM

Its time for you to dump dialup!!!

Score: 0

By xoineg

posted Mar 9, 2006 - 1:02 PM

I am having the same problem and i have a 10MB line.....

Score: 0

By jshurst

posted Mar 9, 2006 - 9:00 AM

It's always hard for me to switch to a new search engine. I was hooked on hotbot for a while (a long time ago), then I switched to google. I think that live.com needs to make the search result's font a little more bold. On my machine it looks as if the visibility is less than 100% and it makes the words look grayish. Google is not like that (the results are very clear). Also the slider is weird. I guess they do that because there is only one page. You can still see which results you are looking at, but it is just very strange.

Score: 0

By jerrico

posted Mar 9, 2006 - 1:43 AM

I really like Google and their (freeeeee)products.I also like the illusion that they want to protect my information from the gov & outside sources. Nobody dislikes saying this more than me,but I like the live search. Especially the image search. All I have to do is scroll down! No more flipen those damn pages,THATS KILLER! Since im an adult, I hate the safe search filter with a passion. It makes me feel as if I lived in China. I dont know how much longer i will be sticking with Google

Score: 0

By ds0934

edited Mar 8, 2006 - 10:27 PM

Search search search. All I find is crap crap crap anymore.

I ran a quick test, just ONE test mind you, for "visual lisp developers bible" which resulted in 106,000 on Google, but 4,505 on search.live.com. Hmmmm.

Score: 0

By w_phillips

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 11:48 PM

Other then "bigger not always better", googles index is how big, and has been active for how long? Also, just because the live search is the successor to MSN search, does not mean that the live search index includes the MSN search index at this point.

Score: 0

By Joe Dirt

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 9:27 PM

I like it but it still looks too "busy".

I have also compared results from Yahoo, MSN, and Google and most searches now turn out about the same. So, right now I stick with http://search.msn.com

Hey, works for me :)

Score: 0

By Jose

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 7:08 PM

With their custom interface, you cannot even middle click on the results with Firefox to get it to open in a new tab... ...baaaaaaaaad

Score: 0

By officeslave

posted Mar 9, 2006 - 10:24 AM

Agreed. I tried one search, and will probably never visit it again until I hear that middle-click works.

Score: 0

By PC Rat

edited Mar 8, 2006 - 6:49 PM

...

Slow in IE. And don't work at all in Opera.
...

The Computer Rodent

...

Score: 0

By ZInsider

edited Mar 8, 2006 - 5:04 PM

Its slow. The features are confusing to use. Search result screen small. I have seen sites that had gadgets which were smoother and easier to use. Poor Architecting and poor programming lacking friendly user interface. Excellent marketing which is the reason anyone would have seen such a poorly done site.

Score: 0

By Bobbitchin

edited Mar 8, 2006 - 4:29 PM

Hmmm one quick test of identical searches showed

Live Search 6 results
Google 697 results

Ite pretty clear who the winner is...

(Google) :p

Score: 0

By athome

posted Mar 9, 2006 - 9:02 AM

If you truly want to compare the two search engines, do them side by side and result by result.

Even though there are 697 for Google and 6 for Live, we all know that we will not look in the last 690 for Google. So compare the results of the first 10(in this case 6) and see if they are the same pages returned and/or relevant to the topic you searched.

Score: 0

By teken894

posted Mar 10, 2006 - 7:19 PM

agreed...end results of google are cr*p, but sometimes are strangely relevant (since a phrase similar to the query was linking to the returned result_)

I don't know about the MSN/Live way of indexing, but for now I'm sticking with google's method

Score: 0

By wincement

edited Mar 8, 2006 - 6:04 PM

As Google has even said themselves:

More results != better

More relevant results == better

I'm not saying Live search is better by any means, I'm just saying that alone isn't evidence that it is worse. BTW, I'm curious what you searched for that gave such different results.

Score: 0

By Bobbitchin

posted Mar 9, 2006 - 1:36 PM

NO more results = better

*I* will decide what is relevent to my search!

The search engine should return every thing that conains the phrase I searched for, not try to guess what I will think is relevent.

Score: 0

By wincement

edited Mar 9, 2006 - 2:15 PM

Then no search engine out there is any good by your own definition.

Do you have any idea how search engines really work?

Score: 0

By Don Juan

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 3:38 PM

I don't care how flashy the interface is, if it doesn't return relevant results, it's useless. It has gotten a lot better, but still not quite as good as google imho.

Score: 0

By xoineg

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 3:34 PM

It is a very good improvement for microsoft. The good graphics may be slowing this whole thing down. Maybe less is better....I teste it looking for some information that i know i was able to find in google right away, but still msn search missed it. They still have more work to do.

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 3:44 PM

Relevant results are realative. Keep in mind that each engine uses its own set of rules to determine results. Thus, each result set will differ, but that doesn't make one better than the other.

For example, for my site, a targeted keyword comes up #1 in Yahoo, #7 in MSN, and not even in the first 3 pages in Google. Does this mean Google is wrong? It depends who you ask -- in other words, it's relative.

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 3:16 PM

My thoughts:
1. Loads as quicky as Google or MSN
2. Very cool concepts and I think they are raising the bar for search interfaces. I'm not saying all the concepts will stick, but some good will come out of this.
3. The scroll bar needs work. It's hard to tell when you are at the top of the search results.
4. The "detail slider" only has 3 positions. A 4th should be added that shows a thumbnail of the sites.

Score: 0

By se7en11

edited Mar 8, 2006 - 2:36 PM

Save yourself some time by getting the CustomizeGoogle plug-in for FireFox. It does just about everything Live does, but hellava lot faster.

http://www.customizegoogle.com/

Here's how it works if your interested:
http://www.customizegoog...m/movies/intro-gif.html

Score: 0

By Eeyan

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 2:20 PM

Loading.................... loading.................... loading.................... loading....................
Oh well here I come www.google.com

Score: 0

By JoshvanHulst

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 1:59 PM

Seems pretty impressive!

- Josh

Score: 0

By midnighter_9999

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 1:48 PM

Why does it take a loooooooooooooooong time to load??? [I use firefox]

Score: 0

By Second Shadow

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 1:42 PM

But wait!!! There's more !!!!!

A "geofederatable" search on Live.com turns out ... (surprise, surprise !!!):
"We couldn't find any results for geofederatable"

Isn't that a shame ... :D

Score: 0

By Second Shadow

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 1:38 PM

"geofederatable" ... That's the word I was looking for !!!! :P

Score: 0

By w_phillips

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 1:15 PM

Worked fine for me, loaded quickly, with everything showing up in firefox and IE7 just fine. Look pretty good too.

Score: 0

By pjb

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 12:42 PM

10 Mins and page still loading! Not very impressive!

Score: 0

By dkratter

posted Mar 8, 2006 - 12:25 PM

Most of the page does not load in Firefox, and it immediately crashed IE6. Not an impressive start, even for a beta.

Score: 0

By thukralz

edited Mar 8, 2006 - 12:35 PM

Worked for me no problem...

Score: 0

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