Windows Live Search

MSN's Windows Live Search debuted today; this is a new search-related site that eventually will be mind-melded into the main MSN Search application and become a superdeduper MSN Search Super Power that will beat out every other search engine in the WORLD. Or, at least that's the plan.

Anyway, I played around with the new Windows Live and I have to say, I'm really liking it. Nice, clean, and uncluttered; I'm a big fan of uncluttered design since I have three kids ('nuff said) and clutter seems to be my lot in life. Lots of new features with Windows Live, including the following (snipped from Windows Live Blog):

• Image search-search for images right on live.com and enjoy a little slide show of your images powered by the hot new Windows Live search
• Windows Live gallery-view all windows live services and add their gadgets if there is one available
• Gadget gallery-the latest and greatest gadgets from microsoftgadgets.com, add the gadget you like to live.com with one click
• Weather- gorgeous icons, drag and drop of cities and see the current conditions for your default city when collapsed!
• Stocks-drag and drop of stocks, collapsed form now shows your stocks in ticker form and chart integration
• Clock- track the time in multiple cities, we even have a nice effect for sunrise and sunset!, collapse it to see the time for your default
• MSN Video -search for any video you like, or browser across categories and watch them inline right on live.com

My favorite feature is the Gadget Gallery, mostly because I'm a sucker for gadgets and the team at MSN has packaged these little widgets in a irrisistible way.

As far as search experience goes, I was pleasantly surprised. There's no "page one, page two" of search results here, oh no. There's just an endless scrolling window of search results and I really liked that more than I thought I would. I also found stuff using Windows Live that I didn't find in other search engines; it's nice to see lack of overlap.

All in all, I think that the team at Windows Live did a bangup job with this one; I think that the main battle is getting people to actually come over and USE it, since search engines inspire a weird kind of loyalty that can be difficult to shake up. Let's test this - what search engine would you use if you could only use ONE search engine?

• Google
• Yahoo
• MSN or Windows Live
• Ask
• Lycos
• Mamma
• Dogpile
• Clusty
• AOL
• another search engine not listed here
• View Results

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