January 20, 2005
MSN Search Ramps Up
For those who haven't been paying much attention to the new MSN Search (Beta) that is fed data by MSN's own spider and uses their own algorithm, now is that last chance to get in on all of the fun.
Over the last few days there have been numerous reports of people getting the MSN Beta results at MSN.com instead of the old Yahoo!-fed results. I had seen this appearing and disappearing over the last couple of months off and on. They're giving you an easy graphic to tell which you're connected to when you conduct a search. Simply look for "MSN Search (beta)" on the graphic in the upper right corner after you search for something.
Rumor has it that MSN will be gradually upping the number and location of people who use the Beta search product, with an expected full, worldwide release in the very near future.
If you haven't been paying attention to MSN's new search capability you'd better start in a hurry! I would expect that once the full release has been issued Microsoft will start a media blitz in an effort to cut in to the marketshare of both Google and Yahoo!