Remember how fast people moved from Webcrawler to AltaVista, and then
how fast they moved from AltaVista to Google. When a better search
engine appears on the web the shift to it can be very quick, even
though each new shift will be more difficult for companies to achieve
as the web matures.
Microsoft has created Live.com as a dedicated search site. One of the
first moves they made was to plug in a new image search engine that
looks promising. If they seriously want to compete with Google, they
will also have to plug in a new ordinary web search engine. That may be
exactly what they are planning: to suddenly replace the old MSN web
search engine with something that can pull the rug from under Google in
a swift move.
al.
