Is that so? I was going to link a news article or two, but filtering out all articles claiming that Google are more popular at the moment because the others don't have good enough search algorithms, I arrived at the conclusion that there are no good articles!
Sure, for users, the switch from Altavista to Google went from 5 searches per single relevant hit to almost always producing several relevant hits on first search. But the switch from Google to MSNYahooLive! wouldn't markedly improve the search results for users, no matter how relevant results the new algorithms produced. Peripheral services on the other hand, if MSNYahooLive! were to outcompete Google on one of those, then maybe that would get the users to also use the MSNYahooLive! Search at the same time. Not that I think that likely, with the way Google have integrated Google accounts from GMail to include every possible service they could include without breaking the service for other users.
MSN/Live and Yahoo! both give me hits that are just as relevant as those Google give me. In fact, the few times I've tried the new Live search engine, it's had slightly better result listings my searches. But my point is, it doesn't matter much to the users if they get 10 out of 10 relevant hits or just 8 out of 10. They still get enough to not be driven away by the low quality of search results. Which means all three of them have about as as little chance of outcompeting the others on purely search hit relevancy. The search may be a huge source of user throughput, but any search quality differences give users very little additional value at this point.
It's the peripheral services that matter. And Google is better at building one shared Google account system for peripheral services than Microsoft or Yahoo! at the moment, and also have better services in themselves for many purposes.
Well, I've always found my Windows Live ID quite trusty: I use it for Live Hotmail, desktop email client, instant messenger, some random webmaster tools, SkyDrive...the array of tools are quite impressive, and I've never considered moving to another set. Hmm.
Well, maybe you're right about Live ID. I could use Live ID for claiming my student rebates (even those on Dell, Sony or the Apple Store!), for instance, instead of having to enter my name and a 16 characters student card number and a password of random alphanum characters that I cannot personally choose or change. And It's used for my MSN accounts. And for doing IE bug reports (at least before they closed the bug database when ie7 final was released...). So I give you that, Microsoft really have something useful in that.
Well MS refused the offer but I believe Mr. Murdoch is looking to invest in Yahoo! now MS have been rejected. As a search engine I don't really rely on Yahoo! but it does have a good reputation on the web along with some of the various other services it does.
Well MS refused the offer but I believe Mr. Murdoch is looking to invest in Yahoo! now MS have been rejected.
Of course. It was the first offer, Yahoo! expects to cram more money out of Microsoft They're making overtures with others, as they have been doing since last time Microsoft put a bid on them and got turned down. I expect Microsoft to raise their bid...
Going back to the topic of search relevancy, there was a search engine that came out in 2003 that was very interesting in its approach - www.mooter.com. It used search clusters and attempted to base it's search algorithm on the human psyche.
They've given up on the search engine now, but it was still an interesting concept, albeit one that failed.
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