Live Search has finally, after much playing around, launched it's new interface. It should look something like this:
Now, what does that remind you of? Just a teensy bit like the clean crisp Google interface that the world knows, perhaps? Actually enforcing the concept of this should be what a search engine interface box looks like. This isn't Live trying to come up with their own brand of interface, and Lord knows plenty of other search engines can and indeed have, this is direct from their 'If you can't beat them, join them' department. It's also making another fundamental flaw, which is that the design constricts the searcher. Instead of helping and assisting, the searcher is forced into the straightjacket of searching the way that Microsoft want them to think.
Now, the next classic schoolchild error comes with the 'More' tab above search. This is exactly the same mess that Google got into a long time ago, by having to prioritize what search elements were most important, and relegating everything else to lesser status. 'More' doesn't tell me anything at all. More what? Search boxes? Search options? Advanced search? (Which is a fun thing itself, because Live doesn't have that as an option, which is, once again, forcing the user to THINK LIKE MICROSOFT!) Anyway, when you click on the 'More' option what do you get? You get a pulldown box that's simply a link which says 'See All'. Now, a couple of points here - if there's only one option, why put this in way of seeing all? Why not just do it? Why make me waste a mouse click? Second point - see all *what*? If I don't know what it is that I'm supposed to be seeing, how can I make any kind of intelligent, informed choice? Is it a list of 2 more things, 20, or 200? Until I actually click on the link I don't know.
As it turns out, I'm taken to another page entirely (therefore changing the basic concept of the search page - at least with Google they keep to the same pull down concept), and I get a choice of links to search options like maps, books, spaces and so on. But, and again we're expected to do as we're told, we have to click on a link to go to the search option. So, in order to do what I want to in the first place I have 2 mouse clicks to work with. It's not a lot, but that's not the issue. The issue is that Microsoft is forcing me down a route that it wants me to go.
So anyway, let's move on and look at the results. I'm comparing them with Google, and they look rather like this:
Live V Google via kwout
Don't worry about trying to make out the words; that's not the point. It's the look of the two sets of pages. They are remarkably similar - so much so that I suspect if I took off the logos and showed them to people they'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. The difference of course is that Google's display is far superior. It's cleaner and admittedly in this example specifically, less advertisement heavy. I can get right to the search results. Other searches will pull up options for related searches, shopping results and so on, which will it still clutters up the top of the page, is vaguely useful. I tried a mobile phones search in both and the results were hysterical. With Google, I got what I expected (as previously mentioned - related and shopping options), while with Microsoft I get 'Top local listings for phones near Mobile, United States' (their emphasis), despite the fact that the engine knows I'm based in the UK.
The Live page is much longer, despite only giving me 8 results with 2 subsidiary results from 2 sites, while with Google I just had the one subsidiary. I can't really see any pluses to using the Live option in terms of display. All that I see, and what I suspect that most others will see, is a poor imitation of Google. Now, I'm sure the development team at Microsoft are going to be saying that they ignored Google, and just did what they thought worked best (and having been on the Search Champs team it's exactly what they said then), but clearly this isn't the case. There's nothing new, interesting, exciting or visionary about what they're doing with search. I've seen startups with more thought and vision than Microsoft. They are simply plodding along trying to be an alternative to Google by trying to be exactly like Google. People who want the Google experience are going to go to Google, and people who don't want that are not going to look at the pale imitation - they're going to go for something different.
And that is why Microsoft are not going to get anywhere with this pale imitation. They lack the courage and vision to really look at search differently. If I get a delegate on a course asking me why Live Search should be their preferred search engine I simply couldn't give them a good reason.
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