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Posted by Orin O'Neill at 5/20/08 8:17 p.m.

Boy, they sound desperate, don't they?

How 'bout making a search engine that gives you relevant results?

Posted by unregistered user at 5/20/08 8:47 p.m.

Fantastic leap by Microsoft. A program that is finally fair to both users and merchants.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/20/08 8:54 p.m.

I think people use Google rather than other search engines because the brand resonates with them more than others. Having a clean interface helps.

I honestly don't think most people think enough or compare search results between engines to make their decision based on the very logical reason of better results.

Microsoft is commoditizing search, to some degree. Sometimes I buy my husband generic shampoo. I can put up with the ugly bottle cause it's cheaper. I would probably put up with a search engine that racks me up some extra $$ over the one with the better brand.

Honestly - Google doesn't find everything that other sites do either. Whenever I search for people, for example, I do so on Spock.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/20/08 9:39 p.m.

#130707,

I just tried Spock to search for someone and it is horrible. Sorry.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/20/08 10:11 p.m.

Todd, sometime back you earthed some patents by Gates on returning the money to users. I guessed from that post of yours that something like this is coming.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/20/08 10:26 p.m.

I did the US on it....what a POS and that's what most of the group told MS. MS does what its wants why do they waste money on studies?

Posted by unregistered user at 5/20/08 10:54 p.m.

MS had much better search algorithms back in 2005 / 2006. The company should start by replacing the algorithms it has now, with the ones it had back then. That would be a much more significant move than its cash back program.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/20/08 11:16 p.m.

Interesting idea. This just reeks of the person that desperately tries to by friends. This will show a bump in traffic while the promo lasts, but until they improve their results they will still play 3rd fiddle.

Posted by Arty Ziff at 5/20/08 11:50 p.m.

Posted by Orin O'Neill at 5/20/08 8:17 p.m.

Boy, they sound desperate, don't they?

How 'bout making a search engine that gives you relevant results?
------
Typical anti-MS bias. The truth is that these days there really isn't much difference between them and Google. And don't fool yourself, Google is just as evil.

www.NoJailForPot.com

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 1:22 a.m.

Desperate, determined - you say toe-may-toe, I say toe-mah-toe. *grin*

Posted by north at 5/21/08 6:57 a.m.

It's easy to see the results of the 'buy your way to search engine prominence' as practiced by Google and Yahoo
whenever you search for a topic and the 'find the lowest prices' pops up on top even if the subject is a historical author or abstract noun.

Posted by Carlos Hawes at 5/21/08 7:14 a.m.

Just wondering if there are anti-trust considerations in a company that is an adjudicated monopolist in one arena (OS) making direct cash payments to attempt to control an adjacent market (search). Here they can't even claim that they are catching up using "innovation", it would be using their large cash reserves to buy market share. Pretty blatant anti-competitive behavior if you ask me.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 8:02 a.m.

Hmm

Once again MS not getting the point of search.
Sure Ill take the cash and use live to purchase items if it makes sense, but a large part of shopping online is the research and comparisons , make that interesting and it just might work, as it is now, its just a discover card with search.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 8:06 a.m.

Todd,

This is a brand new service by itself. Its not a promotion . And it does not give you money if you just search for products using live search.

You actually to go to the cashback service and then buy products from there to get cashback.

I think of this as a search vertical. Like Google Checkout. Though different. Once you start having cash in this service, you should be able to buy products using that cash also. And in future you can see search cashback functioning also like checkout.

Posted by msnicki at 5/21/08 8:52 a.m.

unregistered user writes, "MS had much better search algorithms back in 2005 / 2006. The company should start by replacing the algorithms it has now, with the ones it had back then."

I wrote the query language (the part that figures out what you're searching for) and the ranker (the part that runs the query and orders the results to figure out what should be the first result) used in the Microsoft engine when it first went live in January 2005. That was about 10% of the whole engine, written over a period of about 18 months. I saw my job as doing absolutely whatever it took to beat Google. I knew it wasn't going to happen immediately given Google's lead, but absolutely, it was going to happen, no matter what it took.

I'd have done anything I could to help my team win and, in fact, I did do pretty much anything. Most of 2004, I worked 80 and 100 hours weeks. This was easily the hardest job of my life. I've had 4 migraines in my life and 3 of them came at the end of long "death marches" leading up to some of the milestones. But it was also incredibly satisfying. There's nothing useful that's published anywhere telling you how to do a ranker, so I had to invent everything, including the extraction algorithm and all the hundreds of heuristics. As we came up to our first release, I felt like my head was exploding with ideas of what I'd like to do next.

But just after code freeze around Christmas 2004, my boss told me he thought pretty nearly everyone on the team was more competent and that if I wanted to get ahead, I should interview elsewhere on a team where the rest of the people weren't as smart. A month later, they took away all my responsibility and I started getting complaints I wasn't doing enough work. I stuck it out for 6 months, then left.

For a while, I still remained loyal, using only the Microsoft engine and occasionally giving my old colleagues a heads up when I discovered queries that weren't performing as they should. But sometime in 2006, they appear to have made what I regard as a terribly ill-advised switch to a neural net for scoring the ranker. (My name's on the paper but that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea.) The problem is that neural nets are very slow, so to get the performance they needed, they had to start tossing data.

There are only two ways to get better at ranking: Collect more data or do a better analysis on what you have. But you need both and unfortunately, going to the neural net meant they got great precision on almost no data, kind of like an expert who knows everything about absolutely nothing.

They've had other problems as well, including an incredibly naive implementation of Google's PageRank algorithm for calculating static rank (query-independent page popularity) and almost no meaningful protections against spam. It also looks like they've ripped out and replaced (or at least, seriously dumbed down) the query compiler I built for them; language features that used to work don't seem to any longer.

Meanwhile, Google has marched on, continuing to get a little better every month. I gamely continued to use MSN Search 'till sometime in 2006, then finally threw in the towel. The gap with Google was growing, not closing. For me, it was over.

Yeah, if they want people to start using their engine, I think they are going to have pay them. I can't see any other way it's going to happen.

Posted by number.61 at 5/21/08 9:55 a.m.

hmmm, sounds like they are taking the Jason Calacanis approach ;)

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 11:05 a.m.

This is what happens when you have packaged-goods marketers leading technology efforts. This program means MSN has given up hope of winning and now aspires to be the Discover card of the search market. It may attract a certain demographic but it still pale beside the market leaders (Visa/Google).

Still, they can probably goose their traffic a tiny bit in the near-term so that they can declare victory and a whole new wave of execs can meet their compensation incentives, just like the last crop of mostly departed execs did. The difference is that this wave is more home-grown; the last one were more brought in from outside. After everyone gets paid and MS is still miles behind Google they will look outside the company again for the next wave of leaders.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 11:35 a.m.

Google has used a similar rebate program to promote its Checkout payment service.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 12:27 p.m.

LOL, Microsoft is once again trying one of the few things it excels at - BRIBERY.

In the meantime, I have a present for Bill Gates at www.viva-chavez.com/Topics/Chavez_vs_Gat
es/.

David Blomstrom

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 1:36 p.m.

msnicki wrote:

I wrote the query language (the part that figures out what you're searching for) and the ranker (the part that runs the query and orders the results to figure out what should be the first result) used in the Microsoft engine when it first went live in January 2005. That was about 10% of the whole engine, written over a period of about 18 months. I saw my job as doing absolutely whatever it took to beat Google. I knew it wasn't going to happen immediately given Google's lead, but absolutely, it was going to happen, no matter what it took.

I'm sorry to hear what happened to you. All I can say is that the algorithms MSN Search had around 2005 / 2006 were much better than the ones they have now, and if you contributed to that effort, then very well done. Based on Live Search's performance (backed up by what you said) it seems that there is a lot of politics going in the Live group that is getting in the way of results. Good luck with whatever it you are doing now.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 7:08 p.m.

Besides worse results, many times the results seem to be intentionally skewed toward their own sites. If they want search to work for them, they need to spin search off, so it won't cave in to pressure from HQ.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 9:45 p.m.

Have you guys heard of Live.com?

Posted by unregistered user at 5/21/08 10:00 p.m.

@Orin Oniel.

Lol...
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=remove+windows+and+install+linux&go=&form=QBRE

Posted by msnicki at 5/21/08 11:59 p.m.

unregistered user at 9:45 pm asks, "Have you guys heard of Live.com?"

Yes, of course. And did you know that's just a "new, improved whitening and fresher breath" rebranding of MSN Search?

unregistered user at 10:00 pm gave a link to search on live.com for how to remove windows and install Linux.

Pretty funny. It returns a link to the Microsoft site explaining how to remove Linux instead and install Windows. Uhm, yeah, maybe they do favor their own sites. :)

(Btw, the ranker I wrote for them should have gotten that right because it would have heavily favored the correct exact phrase. This is one of their "improvements" after I left.)

Posted by unregistered user at 5/22/08 12:15 a.m.

Hey Google does the same thing....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=remove+windows+and+install+linux&btnG=Google+Search

In fairness the first relevant Google result is #3, and on Live search it is #7.

Posted by Hightechman at 5/23/08 7:17 a.m.

Cheez Whiz, maybe Msft can pay the EU to search on MSN.
Maybe something in the tune of $1.35Billion.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/26/08 12:54 p.m.

Anybody have a clue about how soon this may launch. I already do igive/isearch and goodsearch/goodshop to raise money for my church for special classes and speakers. So, I'll be glad to do this one, too.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/26/08 1:02 p.m.

Search so good we'll pay you to use it!! Seems a bit like the flailings of a drowning man. This can't be good if this is the best that the brightest minds can come up with is it? What are they doing at Microsoft? Vista,Zune, a crappy search engine, and a gamebox that they lose money on every sale. Can't they just burn their cash reserves in the furnace and hurry up and close the doors?

Posted by unregistered user at 11/23/08 7:22 a.m.

Really good article gives me a better insight, thanks. I use http://www.rewardlover.com as well, it's another cashback site.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/23/08 7:26 a.m.

for the UK Cashback Bay is a good site.