On Monday, Microsoft decided the fundamental functionality of its Windows Live Search platform was complete, and rolled out the 1.0 version
of its all-new search engine as the replacement for MSN Search. MSN has
been, over the past several quarters, Microsoft's least profitable
division, but now the company's goal is to put on a par with those
companies that make Internet search one of the most lucrative
businesses in information technology today.
There will be
significant handicaps to overcome. The very name "Windows Live Search"
seems to proclaim it's not for the Linux or Mac user, even though its
services are presented in industry-standard JavaScript (AJAX). If
Windows Live is to be a revenue source for Microsoft, it has to be
recognized by advertisers as a viable, active evolving platform.This means it has to acquire market share, and with Google's share now
estimated at 60.2%, #2 Yahoo's share at 22.5% and Microsoft splitting
the rest with "Other," according to Internet media analyst firm
Hitwise, Microsoft has a long way to go. Advertisers track performance
in terms of overall reach, so the terms "distant third" can be a
serious turn-off.
But does Windows Live Search really have to be #1
at some future date, before anyone declares it successful? Can't
Microsoft find itself in a more comfortable position with, say, a close third?
BetaNews sat down with the company's senior product manager for
Live.com, Justin Osmer, to find out, and discuss a new service called
Windows Live QnA.
BetaNews: When I've talked with
analysts about Windows Live Search, and what they interpret to be the
goals for Microsoft, they try to frame it in terms of how fast or how
soon Live Search will be able to "beat Google." I'm thinking in my
mind, it doesn't have to beat Google to be successful, does it?
Couldn't Live Search be comfortable as a #3 player?
Justin Osmer:
Certainly, third place is not a bad place to be. Given how far we've
come in such a relatively short period of time, especially compared to
our competitors, in building our own home-grown technology, we're
pretty happy with third place. But we also are not going to rest on
those laurels, because there is more money to be had, there's more
advertising dollars available out there, and with more market share
comes more advertisers.
It's a bit of a cycle, and we absolutely
want to continue to grow our user base, continue to grow our market
share, and that certainly is a goal behind this recent release - to
bring to the market some new offerings as part of the search experience
that are different. That will help people get to the information that
they're looking for in a unique and more customized way.
BetaNews:
Your strategy, I believe, appears to be to position yourself as a tool
provider, much the same way Ask.com has done fairly successfully since
it dropped the "Jeeves" from its name.
Justin Osmer:
We certainly believe that search doesn't have to be a one-way
experience, so we're trying to put in more controls in the hands of the
user, to allow them to get that direct access. A great example of this
is with our image search capability. We've spent a lot of time during
our recent beta period listening to customer feedback. So, some of the
things that we've done with image search that we believe is kind of
best-in-class, is to remove the metadata from the search results that
are shown on the screen.
What we found is people wanted to see
images, they didn't want to see a bunch of text links next to the
images. So we allow you to resize those images in a very fluid way --
the page doesn't have to reload, it's all based on AJAX -- then if you
want the metadata, all you have to do is hover over the image and then
you get the metadata - the size of the image, what Web site it's from,
that sort of thing.
Then if you like that image, you can simply
click and drag it down to what we're calling Scratchpad, which can be a
collection of your results so you can go back and quickly find the
images that were of most interest to you. It's a version of an editor's
table at a photo desk. It puts them all in one place for you to review
them, so you don't have to worry about trying to find them back through
the search results.
BN: Whenever Google introduces a
new feature to its search page, that feature generally leverages its
core, back-end power, its colossal index. They've described it to me
before as an "organic growth scenario." Has Microsoft learned from that
somehow, and in repatterning MSN Search as Windows Live Search, is it
going to be integrating an "organic growth scenario" in the future?
JO:
Certainly, you learn a lot from looking at the query data, and seeing
the types of queries that people are entering, and when they have to go
back in and enter a new query. One of the main objectives we have is to
stop abandonment, where people will go in and get a query, maybe do
another query, and they'll leave frustrated not having found what they
were looking for. That's something that we're continually working on.
Today,
we have a feature called Instant Answers, which pulls data from
Encarta, as well as Fox Sports and a number of other internal and
third-party Web sites. It offers up factual information: "What's the
population of Washington, D.C.?" "Who won the Super Bowl in 2002?"
Things like that pop up as an instant answer at the top of your search
results.
Certainly, as we continue down this path, to use the
term, the organic growth opportunity there is just to leverage those
different elements you have across those different categories of your
index, so they're all coming up in the same place. The Instant Answers
scenario will start to prove itself out with News. If you go to Web and
do a news topical related search, you may see a news result at the top
from our News vertical, but then you'll also get the general, inline
Web results.
BN: You talked about wanting to stop the
abandonment, to avert people leaving without finding what it is they're
looking for. Sometimes, when you have a search engine that is, well,
too good at what it does, and it comes up with accurate results on the
first try, then you have a scenario where customers are satisfied and
then leave, as opposed to other customers who are dissatisfied and keep
searching and keep searching.
JO: Exactly, that's one
of the reasons why we do a lot of lab testing with actual users, and
we're watching them click through the service and supplement that with
the raw data as well. Because you're exactly right - Instant Answers is
a great example. If I want to know who won the Super Bowl in 2002, I
just type that in and get my answer. I probably won't click on anything
on the page, I'll move on. That was a successful search result for me.
Being able to compare that to someone who types in a query, and looks
at the page dumbfounded, can't figure out what to do, and leaves -
those are the types of things that we're constantly working on.
"Increasing
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