The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > State of the Art: Microsoft on the Trail of Google

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > State of the Art: Microsoft on the Trail of Google "Even if the searching part worked perfectly, though, MSN Search would have a ways to go before catching up to the mature, highly polished application-ishness of its rivals. Google and Yahoo, for example, can search for photographs on the Web, not just text. They offer cool shortcuts that can instantly summon phone numbers, FedEx tracking information and airline flight data (Google), or the cheapest local gas, movie showtimes and telephone area-code identification (Yahoo). And don't underestimate the informational power of Google's news-group-searching feature, which plucks out individual words from millions of Internet bulletin-board discussions.
Even so, Microsoft has done a beautiful job de-gunking its home page and removing paid ads from your search results. Will its new search technology attain anything even close to Google's "relevancy?" It's too soon to tell. But if it's successful, Microsoft will have demonstrated its brilliancy, boosted its own importancy and taken another irreversible step toward world dominancy."

(Read the article if you want to understand the idiocy on "brilliancy" etc.)