Google, Yahoo,… what about Windows Live?

Posted by multippt

Google and Yahoo has always remained in the big picture. However, there is one big giant standing in the shadows. Windows Live is probably much better compared to its older precursor, MSN search, and is possibly comparable to the 2 top giants.

Though, Windows Live was not as well-known compared to Google and Yahoo. Rather than word-of-mouth, Microsoft decided to incorporate it into Internet Explorer 7 as the default search engine, which probably did not work as well as compared to Internet Explorer dominance in 2002.

Accuracy
Windows Live might be accurate, with results that probably turn up at almost the same positions as Yahoo and Google. Take “pagerank” or example. The results are almost the same (but with Google possibly turning up the most accurate result - a detailed page from Wikipedia).

However, it is not all that good: The results are quite fine, but not perfect. For example, I do a search on “gadgets”, and I expect to see a nice list of sites that details on, or perhaps reviews on some gadgets. While Google happens to churn out possibly one of the most relevant results (e.g. the results contain a link to a catalog, while another links to a gadget guide), Windows Live happens to churn out similar pages (all of them lead to shopping sites, which is still considered relevant anyway) but it does contain some repeated results (e.g. Google gadgets appears over 6 times). Yahoo gives results that direct users to gadget reviews, which is probably the most relevant of the bunch.

Popularity
Windows Live search unlike other Microsoft products is poorly marketed. The main medium of advertising Windows Live is through someone who has used Microsoft products. Anyone who have not touched any of Microsoft’s products would probably never heard of Windows Live, let alone Windows Live search.

Yes, they threw it at Internet Explorer hoping someone might use it. However, only about 30% of all internet users use Internet Explorer 7. Add about 20% to that to include users who are already using Windows Live services (like Hotmail) and you get about the amount of people who know about Windows Live search (whether they use it is a different story). The fact that Google and Yahoo is already dominating the search industry does not help Microsoft - most people rather use Google and Yahoo than switch to Windows Live. Bad timing perhaps?

There is also another problem with Windows Live. Given the mentality that anything with Windows has got to solely do with Windows, having Windows with a word is bound to limit it to simply Windows users. Perhaps Microsoft should leave out Windows, and market it as “Live Search”? Less words are probably more easier to remember.

The feel
Windows Live search ”revamped” its page 3 times in total - over a period of 2 years. That’s probably much more than Google does over a period of 4 years! While admitably Windows Live search does look better than Google if compared to how they looked when they first started up, Windows Live caused great navigation hazards amongst users because with each revamp comes new places to explore.

At least the latest design looks much better compared to earlier designs. The unfortunate thing is that, despite the latest revamp, the search engine still uses part of the 2nd version to display results. Talk about non-uniformity.

Commercial well-being
While the stock charts of Yahoo and Google are going up, Windows Live does not seem to be faring very well. The share price of Microsoft’s search engines (MSN and Windows Live) appears to be declining steadily and still continues today, which is probably a negative sign for Microsoft.

—

Windows Live search may be down under Google’s and Yahoo’s feet but they may catch up to become one of the titans, in time.