Robert Scoble posted today that he thinks Microsoft’s Live Search has really improved and has closed the gap with Google. Despite that, he doesn’t think anyone is going to switch away from Google. He says he won’t because of the trust he’s built over the years using Google. I think he’ll revisit that strategy at some point.
Over the last couple weeks, I have been using both Google and Live Search. More and more frequently, I have found that the Live Search results are better than Google’s search results. Most of the time they are almost identical. This is really important. The quality of results has to be on par with Google before people will consider switching. Now that the quality is there, here are the main reasons I am switching:
- Switching is easy – there’s really nothing keeping you at Google except habit.
- Live.com is shorter than Google.com – sounds dumb, but it makes a difference! I’ve never been a big user of the search boxes in the browser.
- Live Search looks so much nicer than Google! Both are simple, but the extra color that Live Search does have makes it look better.
- The speed difference is no longer noticable. The main thing I liked about Google was its speed. Live Search is just as fast now though.
I am not saying Live Search is perfect, but neither is Google. Both have their quirks and both have room for improvement. For example, Google’s results seem to be extremely out of date at times, but their image search is far better than Live.com’s. Both Google and Live suck at feed searches – Ask seems to have the lead there.
I think most people will agree with Robert on the trust thing though. When I first started using both engines, I would always do a search with Live Search first, and then do the search in Google. The reason was basically to make sure Live Search wasn’t giving me crap. I trusted Google more. I probably still trust Google more, simply because I’ve been using it for so long. But that doesn’t mean I am not willing to give Live Search a chance.
Are you going to switch?
Read: Robert Scoble
MasterMaq's Blog 