Dumping Google and Yahoo for Microsoft Live Search
on September 15, 2006 at 12:00 amI am generally skeptical of Microsoft’s Franco-Soviet development process. Nonetheless, I have been using a number of common Microsoft programs, such as
- Windows XP
- Windows Live Messenger
- Wordpad
because they work better than competitors. Yet when competitors are required for certain jobs — such as Jedit for editing programs or Google Talk for online message logging — I use those as well.
With that in mind, I have now modified Firefox to use Microsoft Windows Live Search instead of Google. The moment of truth came when I was searching for my article on Citi MasterCard’s reward cuts. Of the top five Windows Live searches, four bring you to my page. Further, the very top result is exactly the one I’m looking for. However, on google there are only four results, and while three will take you there, none are a direct page link.
(I also found through my experiment that spammer sites are now using “tdaxp” as a junk keyword. Before I started this blog, the only pages that contained “tdaxp” were the raw output of some statistical program. So I guess that’s a move up in the world, heh).
I’ve already noticed this with my evolutionary politics notes, with google typically taking you to the category main page while Windows Live Search brings visitors to the actual post.
I began using google back in the google.stanford.edu era. From then to now, I have never had another primary search engine, or recommend that anyone else do so. Now I can say this: I use Windows Live Search. You should, too.
I have installed Stuart Marshall’s Windows Live Engine for Mozilla Firefox, and have changed Firefox’s default behavior by making Windows Live my default search engine (a now removed copy of Yahoo Messenger sneakily changed this behavior and refused to change it back).
I will still use Google apps as they are useful — Google Talk, Goolge Scholar, and GMail especially — but Google Search is no longer the best in the business. Windows Live Search is.
Update: The side search box has been updated to use Windows Live instead of Google. It now looks like thing like:
Additionally, in both Google and Live Search, my friend Mike’s blog “Spooky Action is the 2nd result. Let’s change that, and make Spooky Action #1!
