BRITNEY LA MAS BUSCADA!
MICROSOFT AIMS AT GOOGLE, YAHOO!
By RICHARD WILNER
November 11, 2004 -- The battle of the Web search engines is expected to heat up today as tech behemoth Microsoft begins to unveil its much-anticipated product, aimed squarely at toppling market leaders Google and Yahoo!
The MSN search engine, 18 months in creation, is expected to be fully operational by year end, according to people familiar with the product.
Microsoft's CEO, Bill Gates, who admitted earlier this year that Google had walloped Microsoft with its search engine, promised to catch up and pass Google.
"Google is entrenched in people's minds," said personal technology analyst Rob Enderle, referring to how "Googling" has become another word for looking something up on the Web.
"But, MSN has a built-in advantage because it doesn't have to be better than Google, just as good as Google because it will be atop of most computer users' home page when they turn on their computer," Enderle pointed out. "They won't have to search for it."
Enderle said the MSN advantage extends to it being part of a site that is much more then just a search engine. "In a way it should be compared more to Yahoo!, the No. 2 search engine," he said.
Both MSN and Yahoo! offer news, sports and entertainment content, auctions, travel info,
shopping and other attractions. Google is currently mainly a search engine that is expected to evolve into a more diverse destination.
"It's like they opened up a coffee shop inside your favorite market," Enderle said. "Would you continue to frequent your favorite coffee shop or change and buy your coffee at the supermarket because you are already there?"
Microsoft declined to comment on its search engine.
There's plenty at stake.
Six-year old Google registered $2.2 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2004. Microsoft, meanwhile, has spent $8 billion on MSN since 2000 and it just started earning money this year. MSN had ad revenue of $1 billion this year.
MSN has run a search engine for years, of course, but it was powered by technology supplied by Yahoo!'s Inktomi unit. And Yahoo! wasn't about to give MSN the entire store.
Searches under the old MSN just didn't go as far.
For example, a search for Britney Spears returned 1.8 million hits under MSN, while Google returned 7.5 million and Yahoo! 8.5 million. Similar MSN shortcomings were evident on most search terms.
Not everyone is so confident, though, that MSN's search engine is likely to steamroll its way to the No. 1 position.
"Google has been doing its job successfully for so many people that I don't think people will switch unless MSN provides such superior quality searches," said Danny Sullivan, of SearchEngineWatch.com.
Sullivan said he had gotten a look at some of MSN's features and wasn't overly impressed.
"Look, people can leave Google any time they want just like people can quit smoking any time they want, but people don't," Sullivan said. "Google has plenty of satisfied users."
And the No. 1 search engine is not taking things lying down. On the eve of the MSN search engine's expected debut, Google announced that it improved its technology so that more than 8 billion pages were now searchable, up from 4 billion.
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