Microsoft looks for better way to search the Net
Despite a lack of visible progress in catching up with Google, Microsoft still believes that it will eventually turn the tables by improving the quality of its search results and by changing the way computer users search.
Susan Dumais, a veteran Microsoft search expert, has built a tool to help determine relevance called Personalized Search. It pulls together several hundred results and then compares them with the index that Windows users can build of the documents on their hard drives, a feature called Desktop Search.
Microsoft researchers are exploring other ways to exploit clues about the context of a search as well as conversational-style interfaces that will be more powerful than the way users now enter and modify search terms.
Microsoft seems to be researching a lot trying to figure out how users will search 10 years from now, and are planning for it. However, as of now, the Winsows Live Search results are still burried under spam for most of the terms, while Google seems to have reached a position to attract more and more online searches conducted worldwide.
