Meh, I noticed the new MSN yesterday. The search results do seem to have improved a bit, but they're still mired in the late 90's dotcom mentality that says every square inch of screen space needs to be covered by some kind of revenue generating clutter. On a dialup, it's still substantially slower to load than Google, it's interface is too busy, and to be entirely honest (speaking as a software usability specialist) the search almost seems like an afterthought on what is otherwise a news and content page.
Even though my desktops are all on a 45Mbit DS3, MSN wont be bumping Google as our desktops default start page anytime soon. If MS is serious about taking on Google for web searching, they need to FOCUS on searching and build their site around it. Getting the user to the information they seek should be the ONLY goal of the website...when I go to the web to search for a Java code snippet, or a parts distributor for my '69 Firebird, it's because I need to find those things, and those things only. The last thing I need is to be distracted by feel good articles about "Baby Blogs", gossip about some actresses latest fling, or annoying Flash animations.
If you talk to people who fled Yahoo, Altavista, and Lycos for Google so many years ago, you'll find that most switched because they liked Google's combination of accuracy and simplicity. While everyone else was piling on this feature and that, Google went simple, and because of that won the search wars. MS still hasn't learned their lesson, and is merely continuing on down the same path with a slightly modified backend.
They aren't competing with Google, they're competing with Yahoo.
Well said.
MSN is a joke, on par with Netscape's home page, (the irony I'm sure will be lost on Quasimodo), chock full of cyber-waste best suited to People magazine or Tiger Beat.
I'm on a dialup, and I don't typically bookmark clutter aimed at the MassMind, much less make it a home page. (Google is mine, by the way).
For the record, I have a Hotmail account, (and Yahoo), and being on a dialup use Firefox to block a lot of the clutter.
Gates and crew could use some tips from this site:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/