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With today's beta launch of MSN Internet Search, Microsoft launched into head-to-head competition with some of the Net's hottest companies and a market that seems to escalate with each new search query.
"Today, MSN Internet Search is competitive with the best search sites on the Internet.... Our goal is to be the easiest, fastest way to find information on the Internet that is relevant to you," said Nichole Hardy, product manager for MSN.com. She said the company will spend the next few weeks gathering and analyzing feedback from users before the search engine is officially launched.
The new Microsoft search site takes its core technology from San Mateo, California-based Inktomi, which has won wide acclaim and licensing dollars for its ability to handle the massive volume of queries that Net search engines receive.
Inktomi was first licensed in May 1996, as the core of Wired Digital's HotBot search engine. Since then, Inktomi has signed deals to license its technology far and wide for sites such as Snap Online, GoTo.com, and Yahoo, which swapped in Inktomi's engine as a replacement for AltaVista, its previous technology provider.
Cable modem provider @Home and Japanese telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone have also licensed Inktomi's technology.
So, if a number of search engines are using Inktomi on the backend, the question becomes why is one search engine any better than another?
"This is the long-standing issue with Inktomi," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch. He explained that Inktomi could start losing business if the licensees find they're creating and marketing the same basic product. "People want a better spectrum of results from a variety of sites," he said. Now the race is on for other Inktomi-based sites to distinguish themselves from the pack.
For the time being, though, a search on GoTo.com, HotBot, or Snap yields identical results as those on the new Microsoft site.
To address this issue, Inktomi is giving each of its partners the tools to customize the results of searches, Sullivan said. That way, users will still see a difference in the results when they query different search engines.
At Yahoo, for instance, the Inktomi index is used to return secondary results to its own index of pages. "Yahoo has tweaked their Inktomi results, so you only get the very best page from each site," Sullivan said. Likewise, other Inktomi licensees will be able to customize returns so that the pages most relevant to their particular audiences will be returned.
Hardy said that Microsoft's immediate plans include developing its "top user," or advanced features, and will gradually integrate more editorial-driven directories, a la Yahoo, by linking from third-party sites and developing indexes from its own resources.
Microsoft first announced that it would develop a search site for the Microsoft Network last fall, and currently it offers a choice of engines -- Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos, and AOL Netfind �- from its evolving portal site. But now that its own search site is live, there is some question as to how or if Microsoft will continue to showcase the other sites.
Sullivan said it's probably in Microsoft's best interest to leave users the option to search with other engines from its start page.
"I think they'll leave it that way for the moment because they get a lot of traffic from those search engines," he said. "Microsoft needs that coopetition. If you go to Yahoo, you are directed to [Microsoft Internet Explorer] or Netscape, and I think [search engines] have more power than the browser people."
Hardy said that Microsoft will continue to let users choose between search engines from the company's upcoming Start portal page. However, she didn't rule out altering the lineup. "We might switch around the mix, but our partners are certainly important to us."
