Microsoft and web search
Microsoft has been busy these few weeks and months. Not only with software updates to Windows, Office and Exchange, but also the rollout of what is probably its most ambitious web project since Internet Explorer: Windows Live. As we all know, Windows Live is an umbrella for all kinds of weird and wonderful services competing with just about every major web company out there from Maps (Google) to Expo (eBay).
Most of all however, Windows Live is a search portal, as its home page reveals. Microsoft has been very diligent with searching recently. Ever since Google took the search baton from the “golden oldies” (Altavista and MSN Serch to name but two), Microsoft has been trying to find a way to get it back. Even though recent surveys show an upturn for Live Search, there’s still a long way to go before Google feels remotely threatened. This is why Microsoft is now turning to twists on the now stale search paradigm.
Ms. Dewey was the first really different offering - web search based on Flash. The sexy “webmistress” probably helped too! But it was obviously the wrong time for Microsoft to sit on its laurels, which is why it has been innovating to the extreme these couple of years.
tafiti is what I saw yesterday and it’s what prompted me to write this post in the first place. I haven’t had the time to look through it properly, but from what I can see, it shows Microsoft beginning to “get” what people want, if nothing else. Based on its Silverlight “Flash killer” technology, tafiti takes ideas that have already been done and presents them in a new interface. Multiple searches, storing and sharing results have all been researched before, but they’ve never been intergrated together with a search engine, packaged into a flashy website and presented to everybody. I’m thinking that it’ll be a boon for students research complex topics, who’ll be able to open multiple searches, find what they’re looking for, and then store the results and share them with their peers.
Now I just have to find something to search for!