MSN Search launches. Again.
p2pnet.net News:- Companies such as Microsoft and entities such as the EMI/UMG/Warner/Sony BMG record label cartel and seven major movie studio group don’t believe in competition. They want it all, and they have unimaginably vast budgets, unbelievable political connections and massive propaganda-cum-pr outfits to make it so.
However, we’re now witnessing the decline of the Hollywood empire and Microsoft, too, is finding it can no longer have things its own way, a fact of life witnessed by its home-grown entry into the search engine stakes.
Backed by an incredibly long, and very windy, diatribe on how it’s more or less been in the search engine game since 1998, so on and etc, Microsoft has finally officially fired up its own search engine after its disastrous and embarrassing beta launch last year.
“Starting today, the company said, it will launch a campaign to market MSN Search to 90 percent of consumers in the U.S. with a blitz of advertisements on television and the Web and in print publications,” says the Seattle Times. “MSN is also looking to grab some attention on Microsoft’s Redmond campus today by displaying cars, a tiki hut and a herd of alpacas.”
Because swamping people with pr puff pieces is what it’s all about for Microsoft – and the labels and studios, of course.
However, First tends to stay First online. Which probably means Google and Yahoo will continue to reign supreme, however much money Microsoft lavishes on ads in its bid to stomp them, and any other competition.
In the meanwhile, we can only hope this ‘official’ release fares better than the ‘unofficial’ one launched in November last year, only to fall flat on its face.
It’s the same rhetoric – “Our index has 5 billion documents”– and from the look of it, more or less the same product. Except it’ll probably work this time.
It has all kinds of bells and whistles –
“Tools sitting alongside the MSN search engine allow users to refine results to specific websites, countries, regions or languages,” says the BBC. “Microsoft is also using so-called ‘graphic equalisers’ that let people adjust the relevance of terms to get results that are more up-to-date or more popular. The company said that user feedback from earlier test versions had been used to refine the workings of the finished system.”
“MSN is trying to be more competitive in the search business by using one tool its rivals don’t have: Encarta encyclopedia,” says the Seattle Times. “In the past, it had made a limited amount of Encarta content available free as part of its search results. The rest was available only to paying subscribers.”
But bottom line, people want to be able to enter a name, or whatever, and find pages. It’s that simple. If they can do that, they’re happy. And Google has made them happy for a long time.
Will Microsoft usurp the Big G?
Probably not.
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See:-
very windy – How to Build a Better Search Engine, Microsoft, February 1, 2005
disastrous and embarrassing – New MSN Search – down, p2pnet, November 11, 2004
blitz of advertisements – Microsoft launching search tool in ad blitz, Seattle Times, February 1, 2005
sitting alongside – Microsoft launches its own search, BBC News Online, February 1, 2005
February 22nd, 2005 at 4:39 am
Well, I don’t think the tools Microsoft is using to differentiate its’ search tool from Google look that ridiculous.
It’s pure Microsoft : brilliantly thought, criminally executed, and dangerous.
Since 1995 (Win95, of course), the media, the people, the companies… we all speak of the computer market as if it was a consumer’s market.
Do any of you have a computer at their office?
How many of you use Windows?
Those who don’t, how big a company is it? Do you personnaly know the big boss?
Yet, ALL of you use Google.
But, do never forget that the rulers sleep with the rulers.
Since pharaonic time.
If Bill goes to Michael’s office and says : listen, I’ve integrated a search engine into Windows, and I’ve added some tools so that you will have geographical, popular, recent data, or not. You decide. It’s all in one.
What will Michael do?
Say “Thanks Bill, but I prefer to grant access to all the Internet tool’s to my employees. They’ll chose” ?
Or think “Well, that is a whole security budget …” and eventually shut down access to the Internet?
Microsoft has lost few battles. Because WE think they’re fighting us. They’re not, they’re simply sleeping with your boss.
And that’s why we need no employers. And to the employers here who’ll say that not all employers are sons of b***** : you’re probably an angel, but as long as you’ll “employ” and not “associate” or “contract services” (simply put, OUTSOURCE to other individuals), you’ll be in for some harassment.
It’s a matter of capitalist principle. We’re all driven by the numbers. And the only people who have the power to put hundreds, or thousands, of persons in economic peril are employers (call it the army, the lobbies, the cartels, the big companies, the fat five, the financial market).
BE FREE, BE INDEPENDENT.
If you like Microsoft’s products, fine.
If you don’t, and you scream about while still using some, then swallow your disgust. ‘Cause tomorrow at nine, another same day awaits you.
PecK