MSN Search’s unlaunch
p2pnet.net News:- *New MSN Search – down*
That was our headline yesterday for Microsoft’s much-hyped launch of its beta MSN Search.
But from the look of all the ‘Wowee’ headlines showing up on Google News at the time (before 6:00 am Pacific), few of the mainstream scribes reporting the event had actually tried to use the engine.
*MSN Search’s Beta Blunder*
That’s how Business Week online describes the same event today, going on:
“Oops — Microsoft’s debut of the first public version of its $100 million search engine didn’t quite go according to plan
“Nov. 11 was supposed to be a big day for the folks running MSN Search. The new service, albeit a test version, was slated to launch and begin Microsoft’s big push into the lucrative and competitive world of Internet search technology. But the day didn’t start off too well. The site — http://beta.search.msn.com — went down almost as soon as it went up.”
But it’s a lot more than ‘oops’ when a company of Microsoft’s stature blows a major launch to that extent and its lame, ‘Well Gosh – it was a beta, after all. And Golly, we’re asking users for ideas,’ doesn’t even nearly cut it.
As Business Week sums it up, “It was an egg-on-the-face moment for Microsoft. It expects to build a credible business to counter Web-search leader Google, and it pumped more than $100 million into the nearly two-year development effort. For months, Microsoft execs have crowed about the technology that was soon to come, including the speed with which it delivered results, and new features …”
So how good was it when it finally went online?
“Google’s executives might be sleeping a little easier this weekend after Microsoft unveiled its much-hyped new search engine,” says The Register’s Andrew Orlowski.
After extolling MSN Search’s virtues – mainly speed – he goes on:
“MSN Beta Search falls down badly where it really matters: in delivering results with any relevancy. Like Google, it struggles to distinguish between a source query and an effect query. Searching for “John Leyden”+”blaster worm” and “John Lettice”+”Windows” returned a lot of prattle, but hardly any original articles. When a search is so specific, you’re reasonably expected to receive source articles, you might think, rather than what people are saying about them. And this illustrates a fundamental blindspot that both search engine designers, and web-happy techno utopians both exhibit: they mistake the web for the world.”
===================
See:-
yesterday – New MSN Search – down, p2pnet, Movember 11, 2004
Oops – MSN Search’s Beta Blunder, Business Week Online, November 12, 2004
sleeping a little easier – Microsoft’s Google-killer arrives with a ‘whuh?’, The Register, November 12, 2004
