Microsoft would like "just a little bit Googling around"

Microsoft on the Trail of Google
By DAVID POGUE


"You can't copyright an idea." Despite its admirable if largely unsuccessful recent efforts to pioneer product categories -wireless watches, wireless screens and so on -Microsoft's greatest hits have been clones of other people's successful work, including Windows (based on the Macintosh), Pocket PC (PalmPilot) and Internet Explorer (Netscape Navigator).

Microsoft identified the object of its latest obsession: Google, the No. 1 Internet search page. (Google,you may recall, is preparing for an initial stock offering with an estimated value of $25 billion. Nobody bats around numbers like that without attracting Microsoft's attention.)

For years, Microsoft's own Web search page, MSN Search, has finished a distant third place in the search-engine popularity wars (behind Google and Yahoo). The company's new plan is apparently to remake MSN Search in Google's image.

The Googlification of MSN will occur in two phases. The first, a cosmetic makeover, is now complete and ready for your inspection at www.search.msn.com. The new look consists of an empty white screen that loads blissfully quickly, even over dial-up connections, and an empty, neatly centered text box where you're supposed to type in
what you're looking for. The search page is ad-free and, except for the MSN logo, even devoid of graphics. In short, MSN Search couldn't look more like Google if you photocopied it.

Microsoft has done a beautiful job de-gunking its home page and removing paid ads from your search results.
Will its new search technology attain anything even close to Google's "relevancy?" It's too soon to tell. But if it's successful, Microsoft will have demonstrated its brilliancy, boosted its own importancy and taken another irreversible step toward world dominancy.