Boing Boing reports that MSN search’s top result for “best browser” is Firefox, while the #1 result for “worst browser” is Internet Explorer.
Actually, they’re wrong.
The search for “best browser” with or without quotes, turns up Microsoft’s IE page at number one. For worst browser, however, IE is at the top, with the top four (without quotes) and top two (with quotes) spots.
While the facts were submitter by a reader, that still doesn’t excuse their fact-checker being asleep at the wheel.
February 1st, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Humor, MSN, Search |
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The Times online’s Rhys Blakely was stunned to discover that an MSN vanity search turned up a bunch of Google News results for articles written by him. This search for his name returns almost entirely pages of Google News results pages, most of which are blank and expired dead links. What’s even the point of such results? They don’t work anymore, and only serve to make MSN look bad. MSN should instruct its crawler to stop including Google News pages in its results. If they want to use Google News to find new pages, fine, that’s okay, but there’s no need to hold onto the referring pages.
February 1st, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
General, MSN, Search |
no comments
Todd Bishop has put together a great collection of what’s being said about the launch of MSN Search. Included are a photo of Bill Gates with the MSN Search team in front of a really giant MSN Search (presumably MSN Intergalactic Search), Bill’s open letter announcing the launch. Also:
From the Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft Corp. plans to intensify its attack on Google Inc. with a four-month advertising and marketing campaign to promote its new Internet search engine.
One of Google’s biggest strengths is its brand name. Microsoft will use its campaign to try to build awareness of the MSN Search service among professional workers between ages of 25 and 45 who regularly use the Internet, Mr. Mehdi said. He said the campaign will include online ads on Web sites including Weather.com, ABCNews.com and Reuters.com. Its Super Bowl commercials won’t air nationally, but will appear in local markets including Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Seattle and San Francisco.
Also, this Seattle PI comparison chart is very interesting. While Google leads among searches (67.1 million to Yahoo’s 47.9 and MSN’s 37.7), Yahoo has the most popular site (95.5 million users to Microsoft’s 91.1 million and MSN’s 89.2 million, with Google’s 67.1 leaving it in fifth place).
February 1st, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
General, MSN, Search |
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Proving once again that Microsoft stock is still very important, Business Bits says that Microsoft’s late 2004 $3 dividend was responsible for a record increase in personal income. Apparently, according to a government report covered by Reuters, Microsoft’s dividend was responsible for 3.1% of the record 3.7% increase.
February 1st, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
General |
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Microsoft has officially released MSN Search, replacing the old engine and its Yahoo-based results with its own homegrown technology. The “beta” label is gone, there’s a nice RSS link, the Search Builder feels faster (although I could just be seeing things). There’s a “What’s New In MSN Search” page.
MSN.com also has a new, simplified look. It’s much better organized, and has a lot less clutter. Plus, you get two different color schemes. I like Simply White better than Classic Blue.
John Battelle and the New York Times report.
UPDATE: The MSN Search Weblog announces it.
With this final push we have made more than 40,000 Encarta encyclopedia articles and associated media available for free to MSN Search users, which translates to more than 1.5 million Instant Answers. We also improved and integrated Newsbot, added a button for RSS feeds on the bottom of all applicable search results pages, and increased our MSN Music selection.
February 1st, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
General, MSN, Search |
no comments
MSN has released an update for its Toolbar Suite, with fixes for Outlook, performance, and other bugs. The new version, 02.00.0001.1203, has:
- Eliminated the virus pop ups and increased performance (more below)
- Ability to index Outlook items when it isn’t your default email client
- Clear Deskbar text after performing searches
- Fixed a majority of reported Dr. Watson bugs
- Several bug fixes to improve overall stability & robustness
- Email attachments are no longer saved to a temporary file (which would hurt performance and drive antivirus scanners batty). Instead, they are streamed directly to the filter.
You don’t need it, but you can install it if it will help you. Read more at the MSN Search Weblog, and download it here. Marc Orchant reports that it still hasn’t fixed an IMAP bug.
February 1st, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Desktop Search, General, MSN |
no comments