Oddly, just ahead of its big Searchification event on September 26, Microsoft has refreshed its Live Search page and made it look even more like Google -- the old Google, that is, before it changed the tabs over the search box to links in the top left.
Windows Live Search still has some clever stuff that Google lacks, but it's more or less buried: you get to it by clicking the Options drop-down menu on the right, or by running a search and clicking Advanced. I suspect not many people will do that.
You can still roll your own search engine by going to More and selecting Edit Macros. Again, I suspect not many people will do that.
One of the nice options (under Options) is Windows Live Translator, which probably will get used.....
But the real problem is that Windows Live Search still isn't competitive with Google, and probably not as good as Yahoo Search, which often gets better results than Google. This is a problem for Microsoft because it is building a relatively coherent set of online applications under the Live banner (see last week's Netbytes column, Live and kicking), and take-up basically revolves around the Windows Live versions of Hotmail and Messenger. That contrasts with Google, where the online apps are somewhat less coherent (partly because so many were bought in), but adoption is driven by the Search page.
It's OK to suck in traffic from Hotmail and Messenger by making it easy to search from those, but it's like preaching to the choir. Microsoft really needs Live Search to work well, to suck in new users, the way Google's search does.
Will Windows Live Search 2.0 be the answer? Presumably we'll find out on September 26, when Microsoft is expected to unveil the new look-and-feel, new features and new search results. History says it will be better but nowhere near good enough, but I could be wrong....
