MSN continues to believe its own hype, and many in the search community are growing wary of this “heavy weight” talking the talk but doing little to back up their words. The latest is Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, as saying that MSN’s new search product would overtake Google in the US Market within a very short time period:
“What we’re saying is that in six months’ time we’ll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google.”
We have heard top exec after top exec with Microsoft saying the same thing over the past 18 months, and what we have been given instead is a very poor product. Looking at the log files of our domains, we see some very aggressive spidering activity by MSN, but the depth and speed of the crawls are very suspect. Microsoft’s only chance is heavy integration of search into their products, however, that move has gotten them into hot water before. Our opinion is that in six months, MSN will continue to be behind Google and Yahoo! – they just don’t have the right people in place. If Microsoft can hire the right people, they have a chance to live up to expectations.
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