Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

Is Live The Death Of Google?
By Eric Lester (c) 2006

Dig into any self-labeled "SEO forum" and you'll probably find
some neatly organized categories along the lines of "Google,"
"Yahoo," and "MSN". Checking the amount of activity in each
will reveal the inclusion of Yahoo, and especially MSN, seems
to be a mere "courtesy" on the part of the forum founders.
Microsoft has been trying to change this for some time now, and
the newly branded "Windows Live" is their latest attempt to do
so. Will all those vacant MSN forums be lively any time soon?
The short answer is "no," read on to find out why.

Live.com is many things, including a search engine,
customizable web portal, and the latest attempt by Microsoft to
dig into Google's market share in search. Its opening page is a
simple one, in keeping with the "expectations" built by Google,
providing several options and an invitation for you to
personalize it as your own web portal.

Most of the features on the site are functional; while a few
remain in the development stage and some are in between. Only
Passport members can fully customize the basic Live page with
RSS feeds and "gadgets", much like Google's portal page with
Google Accounts. The basic, un-customized page offers a search
bar with the options of Web, Images, News, Local and QnA.

The Web search performs much as other search engines, only it
serves ads from MSN's new ad network instead of Adwords. It
does offer a "related search" section, something Google has yet
to implement, but a standard feature of Ask.com for a while now.

The relevancy of the results, is, as always, a matter of
debate. MSN's Search performs ably in many regards, but one
can't help but wonder if the larger index Google provides means
you're missing something. Relevancy is undeniably important,
though. It is one of the core reasons a searcher might actually
make a switch, should his current engine of choice "let him
down" too many times.

The Images search is an improvement on the Google and Yahoo
technology, in that it offers dynamic thumbnail display in a
"pageless" layout. Pass your cursor over a thumbnail and it
will enlarge, with a brief description and the URL where the
image can be found. The interface is intuitive and really feels
innovative. The thumbnails can be dynamically resized, and the
"scratchpad" can quickly create collections by drag-and-drop.
The primary drawback to this very innovative feature is that it
will respond slowly for those on dial-up and with weaker
machines.

The News Search is a direct search function that lacks the "top
stories" aggregator of Google News. Type in a word and you will
get back a search list that is drawn from mainstream news
outlets, which have stories that use your search term in the
first sentence or two. The Local button will give you an
interactive map of the area where hits for your search term are
found. There's little innovative here, but the presentation of
the map is nice. It offers similar variations on the "route,
aerial, and hybrid" graphical display popularized by Google
Maps.

Windows Live Q&A allows you to post a question to the Windows
Q&A universe and see who has an answer. This system is still in
beta, so the technical specifics may change. Users post a
question that is then open for 4 days to responses. At the end
of the 4 day period, voting commences on the answers provided.
This feature currently has no Google analog, though Yahoo has a
similar service.

Additional Features- Betas

A variety of betas for Live services are available through
ideas.live.com, the MS equivalent of Google Labs.

The Windows Live Mail is an in-house mail service that provides
you with two gigabytes of storage and an updated version of what
appears to be Outlook Express. It has some desktop features and
keyboard hotkeys, new methods of sorting and categorizing, but
nothing terribly radical. Windows Live Mail Desktop is a
program that allows you to manage multiple e-mail accounts,
including AOL, Gmail and others. It also manages newsgroups and
RSS feeds.

Microsoft Live Office will be a web hosting service designed to
provide you with a basic business website and domain name.
Google Page Creator has tread this territory before, but was
aimed at personal use, whereas Microsoft, with the "Office"
brand, seems to be targeting businesses.

Windows Live Shopping and Windows Live Product Search are both
as advertised: attempts to provide web-wide searches for
products and shopping opportunities. The product search gives a
dynamic display that can range from a simple text list to a
thumbnail layout that borrows from the innovative image search
layout. Searches can be refined by seller, brand, and most
interestingly, "related term", which provides a "tag cloud" of
the kind popular with social bookmarking sites today.

Windows Live Academic, mentioned above, will provide search
opportunities in "thousands of academic and research journals."
If their database has some heft to it, this will be a great
addition to the search process. It remains to be seen if this
academic resource will rival Google Scholar. Like Google
Scholar, the results can be frustrating as many provide links
only to abstracts or excerpts. Access to the full text of such
results requires purchase or subscription to the journal in
which they were originally published.

Conclusions

Live.com's primary innovative feature is the image search, and
even that has issues with slower connections. So far, virtually
everything else served up by Microsoft has been done by Google,
or other search engines, before. Even if Microsoft was able to
"do it better", it will have a hard time convincing existing
users to switch from Google, as there is little incentive to do
so unless these services are done so much better. That is not
currently the case. Microsoft merely offers an "alternative"
with Windows Live, not an indispensable alternative.
================================================================
Mr. Lester worked in the IT industry for 5 years, before serving
for 4 years as the webmaster for Apollo Hosting,
http://www.apollohosting.com. Apollo Hosting provides website
hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services
to a wide range of customers.
================================================================

Copyright © 2006 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.