In case you are wondering what the MSN team (which I am part of) is working on, here is some info.
You may or may not know that we at Microsoft launched our new MSN Search Beta this week. There has been a lot of press coverage on it, of course. Many people still like Google, but the new MSN product looks reasonably compelling too. There is a cool blog from Microsofties which you can read for the latest info on the web search.
So what’s so great about the beta search?
- Reasonably fast.
- Inline answers from Encarta. What is the population of Peru?
- Do your algebra homework. x^2 + 2x + 1 = 0. What is x?
- I rank first on the ego search. Belshe
- Music Search w/ sample music. Madonna
- Image search better than Google. Dinosaur coloring
Whats not as good?
- Still can’t find decent Microsoft APIs. OpenMsgStore
- Every so often reports “temporarily unavailable”