Microsoft Battles Google Searches

[King Cobra]

Full article

Microsoft Corp. is looking beyond Internet searches, heading into its battle with Google Inc. with technology designed to allow people to scour their e-mails, personal computers and even hefty databases for information.

Microsoft plans to release an early version of the technology soon, as part of the software giant's push to compete with Internet search leader Google Inc. A final version is expected in the next 12 months, he said.

 

[beg_ne]

Nice to see M$ hasn't changed their ways. Pre-announce some great "new" technology to create some FUD, then release a halfass product at first then leverage your monopoly to usurp a good product and replace it with M$'s half-broken, buggy version.

 

[Makosuke]

I'm not big on Google being the be-all and end-all of searches (though I have to admit it's gotten there by working better than the competition), but I'd be even less big on MS being in the same position--at least Google has just leveraged it into profit for themselves through advertising, rather than as a crowbar to pry into other markets like MS has done in the past, and likely would with search tech, too.

But as the previous poster mentioned, it's interesting that MS has made two big announcements in the past couple days: "We're going to create the ulitmate desktop search tool, and leverage that against Google since it's a feature they don't have yet." and "We're going to sell an iPod (like) thing for $50."

Both, of course, are at this point nothing but vaporware. Not that MS won't eventually bring something to market, and not that it's not good to know what a company is up to, but I wonder if people still buy these sorts of announcements? "Yeah, we'll have a product better than what the competition has now, in only a few months! Don't buy their garbage now, wait for ours!"

Doesn't work on me, anyway. And hey, it does give the competition a target, whereas MS has no idea what Apple and Google might have up their sleeves (past GMail and similar in-testing announcements, of course).

 

[jimsowden]

Is there anything good and green in this world that microsoft won't try to copy. I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't fail miserably at every attempt. Don't they learn?

 

[Golem]

Both, of course, are at this point nothing but vaporware. Not that MS won't eventually bring something to market,

Not allways sometimes they have done the big announcement,spread the fud and then in the end nothing at was released. Sorry I can remember a specific technology at the moment but I do remember it acheived it's objective of killing the competition.

 

[Fukui]

Not allways sometimes they have done the big announcement,spread the fud and then in the end nothing at was released. Sorry I can remember a specific technology at the moment but I do remember it acheived it's objective of killing the competition.

Cairo? Er, Longhorn...