Live Search Answers Google
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News Analysis. Can innovation pull Microsoft from its search share black hole? Ask Instant Answers. |
Microsoft launched the Instant Answers service back in October. The concept: to provide a smarter search experience that saves searchers time.
I hadn't paid much attention to Instant Answers until yesterday, after reading a Feb. 3 post on Microsoft's Live Search blog about the service coming to Internet Explorer 8.
As Live Search Senior Development Lead Alfred Liu and Program Manager Beatrice Oltean explain: "Instant Answers are available by default with IE 8 when you're using Live Search in the U.S."
Sure enough, typing "weather" into the IE 8 search box brings up several suggestions and the local forecast (see screen capture, right). Instant Answers suggests links for Washington, D.C., and San Diego weather, as I did recent searches for both. Below them is the forecast. Yes, 76F is today's expected high temperature. Please, don't hold the perpetual summer weather against me. Everybody else does.
Microsoft is trying to succeed through innovation—and bundling—at doing what it couldn't through marketing and partnerships: gaining search share. Microsoft isn't alone. Yahoo also is looking to new features as a way of reversing share declines and gaining against Google. On Feb. 3, Yahoo started field-testing Search Pad, which provides a handy pad for recording searches while doing research.
Both Microsoft and Yahoo have got serious search problems competing with Google—much bigger than monthly search share numbers reveal. As I explained on Jan. 29, Google gobbled up most of the share growth in 2008. According to a ComScore report released the week of Jan. 26: "Google Sites, which generated nearly 85 billion searches in 2008, accounted for nearly 90 percent of the total growth in search query volume during the year." That's a simply unbelievable number.
eWEEK Slide Show: Yahoo Search Pad
I would definitely describe Instant Answers with IE 8 as a form of bundling. Companies integrate their stuff with stuff. That's a fact of doing business, except perhaps in the Europe Union where trustbusters have established precedent that bundling, or tying, is illegal. The European Competition Commission has forced Microsoft to ship a separate Windows version without its media player. Internet Explorer may be next. Google's gunning to bundle, too, tying its services to its Chrome browser, at least for marketing purposes.
But my broader point is about innovation. Will people care enough about better search to switch search providers? It's easy enough to do. What is the good-enough experience? Instant Answers' instant availability in Internet Explorer 8 is an answer. But its only meaning comes in context of the Web browser.
Google came to dominate search for many reasons. One of the most important, often overlooked in Google or Microsoft analyses, is Internet Explorer. Microsoft won the browser wars with Netscape, only to later cede the territory. Microsoft's real browser innovation stopped with Internet Explorer 4 and disappeared with IE 6, which shipped in 2001 with Windows XP. Google's rise to search dominance started around the same time as the developmental demise of Microsoft's dominant browser. That would be in late 2002, according to ComScore.
When search started to pay real dividends, AOL renewed Netscape development (only later to abandon it altogether) and Mozilla developed Firefox (later going commercial). Now there is plenty of browser competition going on, most of it funded by Google search deals. Microsoft renewed IE development in 2005-2006. But Internet Explorer 7, like Windows Vista, was a grab bag of usability dysfunction, particularly the annoying security popups and application/Web site compatibility problems.
It's not rocket science, people. The browser is the gateway to search. The browser in some ways defines the search experience. IE 6 was oh-so-1990s even in 2002. Firefox and Safari, and now Google Chrome, pull users away from Internet Explorer. Google is the default search engine for these competing browsers.
The year 2009 will define the future of Web browsers and search. Most important: Microsoft is truly innovating on the Web again. It took a decade but Internet Explorer is once again cool, cutting-edge. Feature for feature—and conceding that there are still too many security notices—IE is a much better browser than Chrome and in some ways Firefox. Yeah, yeah, flame me in comments, Firefox fans.
The browser is now the stage for a new battle of monopolies: Google leveraging its search dominance and Microsoft its Web browser and operating system dominance. Some people could argue that it's a new world, old world struggle. Google represents the future with cloud computing and Microsoft stands for the past with desktop software. But that's an oversimplified perspective on this epic struggle. Microsoft is pushing hard into Web services, even as Google, with projects like Gears, looks for a place on the desktop.
Browser innovation—and services tied to it—will determine which side does better, I predict. Watch for Google and Microsoft to more aggressively tie existing products and services to the browser.
I call out Microsoft's Instant Answers because it competes with what's core to Google. Most people won't switch search engines because of Instant Answers. But what if they're running Windows 7 and/or IE 8 and a couple of Live services? To my surprise, IE 8 services like Web Slices are really useful. As I use more of these IE 8 features, I'm more likely to use Live Search. I like Chrome (don't you?) Chrome is an innovative browser, but immature compared with IE 8.
Google will use search to drive up Chrome usage share, while Microsoft will use Internet Explorer to drive up search share. It's unimaginable for either company to dramatically lose share in its dominant category, which is why I expect both will be losers in making gains. In the short term. Google's challenge is to build a better browser for driving search. Microsoft must build better search to drive up share from its better browser.
The answer to which will win, if either one, isn't instant.
[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at live.com]
Comments (13)
"It took a decade but Internet Explorer is once again cool, cutting edge."
You must be joking... They have barely managed to get CSS2.1 ready 5 years after everyone else. Their CSS3 support is non-existent as is their HTML storage support (even the iPhone supports that). Advanced features like the canvas (which everyone else supports) go unnoticed because they compete with Silverlight. And that is ignoring any unintentional bugs (which there are lots).
http://ajaxian.com/archives/push-back-digital-tv-or-ie-8
People who have to hide all the bugs in IE are starting to get tired of it. Fairly soon websites will write to HTML5 and CSS3 and then just degrade for IE.
The betas and RC releases seem to have so many bugs and regressions that it is impossible for any web developer to write to it until the final release is out and we can see which bugs were left.
Chrome was not designed to be a market contender, it was Google's way of showing Microsoft that any fool can make a decent compliant browser in a few years. Microsoft has had over 10 years and they cannot make a browser that wins in any benchmark. They just claim that benchmarks are not fair without providing any tests which are.
You only have to read the IE blog for 5 minutes to see that the IE team are just closing bugs without reason and making the bug tracking very closed. It seems like Windows 7 development is taking the same line.
Posted by billybob | February 4, 2009 3:28 PM
"It's not rocket science, people. The browser is the gateway to search. "
Not. The browser is not the gateway to search. The Personal Computer desktop is. The mobile internet device desktop is.
The truth is Instant Answers SHOULD be integrated with Windows. When I click on my Windows key and start to type, I should get the same options: define "word", display weather, add two numbers, etc.
I imagine the reason MS has not yet done this is because of the anti-trust concerns. But that's where the feature belongs.
Posted by Chad Rowles | February 4, 2009 3:47 PM
Google won search because of better results and a cleaner interface.
"Instant Answers" just sounds like more of the same old Microsoft giving me what they think I want rather than what I ask for in a fast and clean manner.
More isn't always better, sometimes its just more.
Posted by Phil | February 4, 2009 4:01 PM
This looks like an extension of the Open Search API, so they cannot bundle. Google just has to work out what their extension was and then they can have the same search results. Wikipedia are already doing it so it it not some big secret.
P.S. Amazon invented Open Search so you should give credit to them. It wasn't because of Microsoft innovation.
Posted by billybob | February 4, 2009 4:10 PM
"When I click on my Windows key and start to type, I should get the same options"
That would send all of your local PC searches to the web search engine. Is that something you really want? What if you are searching your PC for sensitive information?
Posted by billybob | February 4, 2009 4:13 PM
@chad:
and then get promply sued for tying an internet based search engine into their OS?
Not likely.
Posted by Shiloh Norman | February 4, 2009 6:59 PM
@billybob
This would NOT send all searches across the internet. Search scope might be your PC, your local network, a specific site (or sites) or across the internet. The choice of scope should be dictated by the user and integrated into the ui and is to a small degree in windows7.
@Shiloh Norman
I would argue that InstantAnswers is not really a search. Search is what happens when the answer to a query is unknown.
Providing access to the weather, dictionary, thesaurus, calculator and questions such as "what are the directions to", "where is", "who is", etc. seems perfectly acceptable to me.
But MS could also open up the system so that other providers can hook in their services.
Posted by Chad Rowles | February 4, 2009 8:20 PM
@ Chad Rowles:
You just said one of the most profane four letter words in Microsoft's dictionary: "open"
Posted by Will | February 4, 2009 8:50 PM
live search, live.com, msn.com, windows live, whatever it is called now, it is clearly a dead duck, DEAD, deader than a doornail. OS/2 might still live, but MSFT inspirations on the web are DEAD DEAD DEAD. Its all over now except for Stevie B's fantasies about control the internet. Which is going happen NOT, at great cost to the stockholders.
Microsoft is a dieing dinosaur that hasn't clue one how to compete with Google. But I hope they continue to pour stockholders money down the rabbit hole till they go broke trying to kill google. Maybe then they will learn something about how to code and what customers really want. MSFT is too locked in thinking wise, they only know how to steal and cheat, this is not going to work against Google. Google will go after them, that is the difference.
Steve doesn't get it, he never will, he is a creature of the master, the Gates one. As such he cannot think for himself and should be replaced with someone who can.
Posted by Samel L Bronowitz | February 5, 2009 12:27 AM
If only the browser is the gateway to search, then MicroSoft is somehow still in trouble.
IE's competing browsers are gaining marketshare too, and they will not have Instant Answers integrated by default.
And then there is the growing amount of mobile surfers, and Googles Android is doing good business there too, Motorola ditched WM for Android. I guess that's the first big sheep, others will follow.
And Mac OS X is growing and doesn't come with IE8.
Netbooks-share is growing, and once people realise that some lite linux-distro is good enough to surf, mail and chat while listening to some mp3-music, MicroSoft will become irrelevant there too.
But it's not just the browser, it's the search-result that count. And until today, Live is no match to Google.
Posted by Willem | February 5, 2009 4:10 AM
I am a Firefox fan, but I won't give you grief Joe. I am sure IE8 is great, and I occasionally use it, just for the experience. I am using the Firefox 3.1 beta and it is lightning fast, compliant with every website I have visited (except Live Hotmail). I use the IETab add-on for that.
Until M.S. gives me a compelling reason to change, I will stick with F.F. I do admit, instant answers looks intersting and I will try it, but I don't think I will change browsers over it.
Posted by Ridley | February 5, 2009 10:33 AM
"That's a fact of doing business, except perhaps in the Europe Union where trustbusters have established precedent that bundling, or tying, is illegal."
No, it's only illegal if you are dominant. Even worse, they arbitrarily decide what constitutes "dominant". It's even more flawed that the DOJ "monopoly" definition.
Posted by Paul | February 5, 2009 1:31 PM
@Paul
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Whilst I welcome any attempts to promote competition in any industry, I have to agree with you.
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Weve experienced "trustbusters" before (btw like the name) with some utilities over in the UK. What was supposed to be a money saving competition creator in the UK for the customer, quickly degenerated into underhanded selling tactics, dodgy bills and confusion all round. (IMO)
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Whilst the spirit of what the EU has "ruled" is great, I fear that the implimentation could become another electricity supplier or 188 type fiasco that we've already seen.
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Time will tell, but my money is on the whole thing causing more problems than it solves. I dont think Im alone either.
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That being said, its been "ruled" and for better or worse we had better get used to it. After the utilities fiasco, we've learned, theres no going back.
Posted by Goblin | February 5, 2009 4:31 PM