In an unaccustomed role as challenger, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) 
unveiled its search engine
this week to some glitches and complaints -- nothing new for the software
giant -- and the new presence prompted Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to respond immediately.
The result is a bit of a role reversal as the upstart turned dominant player, Google, prepared for battle with the hungry newcomer, Microsoft.
The software giant announced that its MSN Search Service would deliver results from more than five billion Web documents. Google tried to upstage Microsoft's unveiling by announcing that its spiders now crawled more than eight billion pages.
IDC analyst Sue Feldman told TechNewsWorld that as search engines continue growing and "spidering" larger indexes, response time and relevant results become the greatest challenges.
Still, Feldman said that one of the most important things to remember is that this market -- already competitive with Google,
Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and other search applications -- could still grow. "There is room for more than one business," Feldman said, likening search
engines to automobiles. "This is a huge market."
Non-Google Glitches
Microsoft's search suffered from early glitches and poor reviews upon its release, which was in beta form.
The glitches were minor, and analysts such as Feldman concurred with Microsoft's statements that the hiccups, which included "page unavailable" notices on some searches, were expected.
"The only way you can test these things is to have lots of people hitting on it," Feldman said. "It isn't until you go live that you know how many things can go wrong or won't go wrong."
Some reports also indicated that the MSN Search, which provides a more elaborate advanced search and has been called faster than Google, delivered less relevant results -- a key challenge and requirement of quality searching.
Good and Bad of Late
Feldman said MSN Search, which attempts to provide relevant answers based on type of query, was both benefiting and suffering from coming late to the market.
"The advantage is, you learn from the mistakes already discovered and made," Feldman said. "There is a technical advantage in waiting to see what are the problems and finding it in your own code first."
As for the down side, Feldman said Microsoft is releasing its search to far more scrutiny and lacks the experience that a strictly search-oriented company might have.
"MSN is coming into a very different world than Google came into when they started out," Feldman said.
Feature Factor
Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio said while Microsoft certainly wants a piece of the multi-billion dollar search engine market, it is now facing the same kind of challenge it has posed to rivals for years.
"It's what you get used to," DiDio told TechNewsWorld, referring to Google's existing mind and market share. "Now [Microsoft is] going to have to fight on feature/function."
DiDio said that despite the players' focus on their billions of pages crawled, users are more interested in innovative features, and the players will compete on this front.
"The customer doesn't really see that," DiDio said of the page figures. "What
they see is, 'Is there some new gee-whiz thing I can do with one that I
couldn't do with the other.' It's what people can see and use that's going to
have cachet, not five or eight billion."
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