The new beta MSN Search site has launched.
I had a quick look. Here's my take on the beta.
- The site seems 'Temporarily Unavailable' quite often.
- It's is slow. I mean dog slow. Some results took around half a minute to come back. If MSN Search is to surpass Google (Steve Ballmer's words, not mine..), it should at least return results as quickly as Google does.
- Quality of results is dubious. Search for 'ASP.NET' - and you'll only get one result - you guessed it, Microsoft's ASP.NET site. That's just silly.
Having said all that, I realize that this is a beta version. But surely if people are meant to take MSN Search seriously, this beta needs to meet a certain level of quality and performance criteria. At the moment, it just sucks pretty bad for the reasons mentioned above.
What do you think?