ResearchBuzz

I have been stumping around for the last couple of days very upset about the idea of Yahoo/Microsoft, but then I sat down, calmed down, and realized that such an arrangement would have some advantages. I was only able to think of nine, but they were there.

The Nine Good Things Happening From Microsoft/Yahoo Merger

9. Bill Gates tapped as new Yahoo yodeling guy.

8. Flickr starts MS Bob photo pool.

7. 404 error pages at Yahoo.com replaced with adorable blue screens.

6. After acquisition, Yahoo realizes its stumbles with multimedia properties are due to lack of focus. The next multimedia service is called Yahoo! Monkey Sounds.

5. In addition to standard intitle: and inurl: syntax, Yahoo’s search engine adds webserveros:.

4. Ironically, everybody thinks “Vista del.icio.us” is a kind of apple.

3. Yahoo Pipes adds new module — “Spin”.

2. Easter Egg on Yahoo! Maps allows you to play a Where’s Waldo-like game called Where’s Paul Allen.

1. Still woozy from the smell of all that cashola, Yahoo’s shareholders accidentally appoint Clippy as Yahoo’s Transition CEO. (”I see you’re trying to turn a company around…”)

Appalled.

Appalled and horrified. Worried. Scared.

Did I say appalled?

Unless you’ve been under a particularly tightly-sealed rock, you heard that this morning Microsoft offered over $44 billion to purchase Yahoo. That’s a considerable premium under recent closing prices. And Microsoft made the offer public, taking it straight to the shareholders.

That’s about the least auspicious beginning I can think of. Microsoft has talked to Yahoo before and got nowhere, so it tried again by appealing directly to the shareholders with a truck load — ten truckloads — a STADIUMLOAD — of money. There’s a lot of muh-muh-muh in the discussion about common goals and Google and putting resources together, but Microsoft is getting this done by hitting the greed button.

Which feels disrespectful to me. To the board, to Jerry Yang, to the whole company.

Microsoft is quoted several places as saying, “Together, Microsoft and Yahoo can offer competitive choice…” No. Microsoft could have offered competitive choice. Yahoo could have offered competitive choice. They didn’t because of the choices that they made and the things they decided to emphasize. Is tying them together going to make things better? No. In fact, it might make them worse if some truly great things that Yahoo is doing (Flickr’s Commons project, Yahoo Pipes, all the API work) and throws them out in favor of ramming LiveYahoo or YaSearch (or whatever it ends up being called) down our snorkels.

As a searcher, I have used but am not fond of Live Search. I got really disgusted with it last March after Microsoft turned off some special syntax functionality due to scrapers. Isn’t there some other option? Create an API with key? CAPTCHA? Something??? I sympathize if the syntax is being misused, but is the answer really to TURN IT OFF for the rest of us?

I use Yahoo too, and its search is okay — Yahoo News is lovely. Unfortunately what started as the core of Yahoo — the Yahoo Directory — is beyond bad. It’s out of date. With the Open Directory Project as moribund as it is, that means there’s no useful searchable subject index out there. And Yahoo has del.icio.us! They have jillions of people adding bookmarks to that thing constantly! Can’t that be at least a way to keep the directory updated?

I feel awful about this tieup. I’m going to have to go think about it some more. I’ll probably still hate it but at least I’ll be able to articulate it better.

Last week, Microsoft’s Live Search (as opposed to the I’m-Not-Dead-I’m-Getting-Better” search) announced a new version, so I moseyed over to give it a test drive.

The search URL, of course, is http://www.live.com . Changes that aren’t overtly obvious include a quadrupling of the index (though I didn’t see solid numbers in the press release) and some changes in algorithms and query refinements. The search interface on the home page is still admirably minimalist.

I did a search for Hawaii. I got something over 215 million results (as opposed to about 162 million for Google) with Hawaii.com as the first search result. (GoHawaii.com, Hawaii’s official tourism site, is Google’s first result.) On the other hand, a search for “obey the toaster” on Live got 89 results, and 284 results on Google.

I liked the way Live handled questions. Why is the sky blue? brought a page full of relevant answers, from a variety of sources. This search does get you some suggested searches which I found weird, like “Who Is San Lorenzo Ruiz” (And THAT search leads to the suggested search What Is Nanotechnology so I think we can announce Live suggested searches Officially Wacky.)

Live does offer some of what they call Rich Answers. Searching for Elvis Presley, for examples, provides several images, a link to a celebrity index, and some music information. I find myself however preferring Ask’s Smart Answer, which had more immediate biographical information and more multimedia up front (though not as much musical information.)

I find the new improved Live search a perfectly good search engine that handles questions really well, but there was nothing here that grabbed me and really made me want to start using it more.