How many fingers in how many pies?

November 11, 2004 5:23 AM

Microsoft has unleashed their internet search engine to the world. It currently isn't working, at least for me. Is it wrong of me to wish it stays that way?
posted by ashbury (43 comments total)

Yes. Because my brother worked on it and I'd like for him to continue to be gainfully employed.

So that I can borrow money from him.
posted by papercake at 5:53 AM on November 11, 2004

If it works then great, I'll adopt it with reservations. If I see that the order of results are tampered with or otherwise sullied I won't adopt it.
posted by substrate at 5:59 AM on November 11, 2004

Competition makes everything better... what are you, a communist?
posted by ph00dz at 6:02 AM on November 11, 2004

might have been nice to wait until it worked before posting it? six gold stars for being first, but minus several zillion for usefulness.
what do we do now, sit round and say "bad. microsoft bad. google good. micrsoft bad. pie."?
posted by andrew cooke at 6:03 AM on November 11, 2004

Yah, I realize it is Beta and all, but sheesh, it can't even find Metafilter....
posted by Eekacat at 6:08 AM on November 11, 2004

Is it wrong of me to wish it stays that way?

Is it wrong that this search engine failing to ever work would please you? Well, I don’t see as that is wrong per se, just a bit weird.
posted by ed\26h at 6:11 AM on November 11, 2004

Microsoft has an amazing way of sucking the joy and life out of any technology it decides to 'develop'. Is it just their implementation (e.g, comic chat) or is it something more?There are a few good ideas. I particularly like the graphic equalizer idea for sorting results.
posted by DrDoberman at 6:14 AM on November 11, 2004

I searched for "google" on it.

Heh heh.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 6:20 AM on November 11, 2004

Good god.
posted by ed\26h at 6:23 AM on November 11, 2004

BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft sucks. Arafat is still dead.
posted by PrinceValium at 6:43 AM on November 11, 2004

I searched for "shitty search engine", and I got this message: "This site is temporarily unavailable, please check back soon".
posted by dhoyt at 6:47 AM on November 11, 2004

MSN's settings page

Google's Preferences page.

Yikes. They're not even trying, are they.
posted by PrinceValium at 6:57 AM on November 11, 2004

i searched for sites that are temporarily unavailable and it worked perfectly. MICROSOFT ROCKS!!!
posted by zeoslap at 6:58 AM on November 11, 2004

"what do we do now, sit round and say "bad. microsoft bad. google good. micrsoft bad. pie."?"

It seems to work for /.
posted by soulhuntre at 6:58 AM on November 11, 2004

This site is temporarily unavailable, please check back soon.
Didn't get the results you expected?

Au contraire!
posted by DrDoberman at 7:05 AM on November 11, 2004

Microsoft doesn't try, they either copy or they buy.

Seriously, if they want success, they ought to buy Google...
posted by Eekacat at 7:24 AM on November 11, 2004

What Microsoft found from the beta release:

it doesn't work.

Back to the lab guys.
posted by SpaceCadet at 7:28 AM on November 11, 2004

Microsoft Crawling Google Results For New Search Engine?
has any of you seen this behavior?
posted by MzB at 7:36 AM on November 11, 2004

Microsoft unveils service in search for Google rival


Bill Gates, seen here picking his nose in imitation of
what Microsoft has been doing while Google and Firefox
kick its ass. (AFP/File Photo)
posted by Shane at 7:39 AM on November 11, 2004

Hmm, why should I care that the largest software company in the world is late to market with pretty much the exact same product that's already been available by other folks?

I did my one search on it, that'll be the only search I ever do on it.

Just because they can doesn't mean they should. I really wish Bill Gates would learn that sometime.
posted by fenriq at 7:49 AM on November 11, 2004

a simple interface search engine - where'd they get that idea!?
posted by alfredogarcia at 7:53 AM on November 11, 2004

Just wait for the update, Microsoft Search Engine XP 2004 Plus!
posted by tommasz at 8:05 AM on November 11, 2004

Ooh. How original. A Microsoft bashing thread. [yawn]
posted by JeffK at 8:21 AM on November 11, 2004

Just name checked msyelf, and I think I can now say that the MSN search facility is definitely superior. Oddly enough, it did claim to have found considerably more results. (ie 12000 instead of 4500)
posted by biffa at 8:36 AM on November 11, 2004

Hmm, why should I care that the largest software company in the world is late to market with pretty much the exact same product that's already been available by other folks?

First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you...
posted by namespan at 8:56 AM on November 11, 2004

just name checked my website, and the #1 result in google is buried on page 6 in the MSN search - with a whole lot of irrelevant crap preceeding it.

so the fact that the site has been live at the same URL since '95, has nothing on it except info directly relating to the search term, and is linked to by lots of other sites - that apparently means nothing to the MSN crawler? if they're scraping google results for their database, they aren't paying much attention to it.

i'm not about to help them by submitting feedback, either. operating system crashes, i send feedback. trying to drive one of my favorite services out of business by offering a crappy alternative, well, screw 'em. i have enough problems making my websites work with IE, i'd like at least one aspect of my internets to not involve dealing with microsoft's inept mediocrity.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:11 AM on November 11, 2004

I'm number 2 on this site when ego surfing, and the displayed 500 results quickly reduced itself down to 17. And it looks rubbish. But it works, and that's something.

re: comic chat. I was a huge fan of this, and still use it, so I guess the "sucking the joy out of" thing is subjective.
posted by seanyboy at 9:16 AM on November 11, 2004

An attempt to deride Bill Gates by posting a picture of him scratching the side of his nose. Extraordinary. Absolutely fucking extraordinary.
posted by ed\26h at 9:32 AM on November 11, 2004

Just wait for the update, Microsoft Search Engine XP 2004 Plus!

Just $39.99 for each machine you want to use it on!
posted by rushmc at 9:33 AM on November 11, 2004

A colleague at work just mailed me this which if true seems to be a bit funny. MSN using cracked software? Surely some mistake?
posted by longbaugh at 10:27 AM on November 11, 2004

egosurfing "wendell", I am currently #2 at AltaVista/Yahoo, and #17 at Google... MSN Search: #50.

And I write for MSNBC.com... Not a good sign. (Have I mentioned lately that I love AltaVista?)
posted by wendell at 10:30 AM on November 11, 2004

An attempt to deride Bill Gates by posting a picture of him scratching the side of his nose. Extraordinary. Absolutely fucking extraordinary.

Actually, it was more an attempt to deride Microsoft on the basis of Firefox, created by a 17-year-old in 2002, kicking IE's ass, and thus something of a derision of their current project ... aw, nevermind. You MS stockholders are a testy bunch.
posted by Shane at 11:14 AM on November 11, 2004

Jason Dowdell at webpronews.com is speculating that Microsoft is crawling Google's results to populate its own database.
posted by tommasz at 12:00 PM on November 11, 2004

You MS stockholders are a testy bunch.

Well yeeaahs.

Also, quite ironic really seeing as I'm posting from Firefox.
posted by ed\26h at 12:36 PM on November 11, 2004

tommasz: speculating that Microsoft is crawling Google's results to populate its own database

Utter non-truth. He even mentions the header/referrer link put there by the MSN bot.

MS is crawling sites with its own bots; if it is crawling for links that don't exist, it's doing so for the same reason that Google would still have them in their listing: some sites somewhere currently or at one time linked to those pages. Is HREF really that hard a concept to understand? They are listed as pages to be crawled/recrawled until confirmed to be no longer in existence and eventually removed from the search engine. As if Google couldn't or wouldn't implement basic ACLs if they were being heavily crawled by MS. Pfft.

Full Disclosure: I speak from an incredibly biased position
posted by hincandenza at 1:08 PM on November 11, 2004

Dowdell's speculations are probably nonsense.
posted by Potsy at 2:05 PM on November 11, 2004

Lick my hairy beanbag, Microsoft! (check that first link... hmmm...)
posted by tapeguy at 6:34 PM on November 11, 2004

I usually use the term "jaguar" to test out search engines. Ideally, I like to see both the car company, and the big cat come up high in the list. Now the OS X flavor is also in the mix, and I find it curious that OS X Jaguar is page one on google, and not page one on MSFT.

They have too much of a history for me to think they're not dicking around with the results somehow.
posted by bashos_frog at 8:17 PM on November 11, 2004

Is it just their implementation (e.g, comic chat) or is it something more?

T DRDOBERMAN SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, COMIC CHAT WAS A GREAT GIFT TO THE WORLD: HULGULHULGHLGUHGULHLGUHLGUH!
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:30 PM on November 11, 2004

that image linked above was apparently linked to by google news, i'm sure that was entirely automated.. haha
posted by rhyax at 10:35 PM on November 11, 2004

Thanks, DrDoberman. The avatar with the tie was the first image I saw of my (future) husband. In reality, he's quite a bit cuter than that.
posted by deborah at 11:22 PM on November 11, 2004

Excellent opinion piece.
posted by ruelle at 5:37 AM on November 12, 2004

Hmmm... Search for "more evil than satan" and guess what's the first hit?
posted by 327.ca at 2:16 PM on November 12, 2004