Smartaleck,
The point isn't that they haven't had successess (some of them even being convicted of illegal activity in them).. the point is that not everything MS has touched has been a success. The idea that because its "microsoft" its going to win, is foolishness at best.
MS has launched big net and search initiatives over the past 10 years, and more of them have flopped than succeeded, particularly in its search arena. MSN is about 15% of search right now... Google is more than twice that, and there is nothing in the new MSN search that is going to leapfrog Google.
MS's net initiatives have been far less than stellar, and this latest "our search is going to rock" is no more than the same PR lines from the last time they tried a new search. Will they hype it yea? Will they market? Yea. Will that get folks to try it? Sure... but will they change from Google... sorry, haven't seen anything in their new search that gives the typical user any reason to change search providers.... You gotta offer more than, hey, we have that too.
"The point isn't that they haven't had successess"
I just don't choose to short change and dismiss them so quickly.
In the world of data bases the ongoing quest for suprmacy among IBM's DB, SQL and Oracle has only been cause for improvement in all three competitors.
Competition is good. :-)