Microsoft takes a stab at cutting Google’s search lead
In its latest bid to even slightly narrow Google’s massive lead in online search, Microsoft has unveiled changes to its Live Search service that the Redmond software behemoth says more than quadruples the amount of material it searches. And, Microsoft adds, more improvements are coming over the next month.
The Live Search changes, geared toward delivering more relevant responses that anticipate what users want, are the latest in a search-engine race heating up as rivals seek to cut into Google’s significant marketshare lead. Yahoo has quietly integrated similar relevance enhancements, while Ask.com unveiled what it calls 3D searching in June.
So can these kinds of changes bring the online masses to move beyond the one-time peek and begin “googling” somewhere else? It seems unlikely.
“Habits are hard to break, and it is especially hard to break good habits,” Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Land, told the New York Times. “If you’ve had a good experience with Google, you have little reason to switch.”
Simply another attempt by an overblown software company to kill off all possible competition, in everything. Very happy to see the EU chop them down somewhat, it is past time that someone did.
They need to get over this notion of making their search non-functional or gimpy when encountering some other company’s browser.