although money still talks, but you really win by providing the best service or experience to your end users. this was true for office and visual studio, they catch the competitors and eventually beat them by quality. this can not be said on search experiences though. I admit using google whenever i need find something online, chances i usually find what i want in no time. i would love to use live search if it provides better results (or even comparable results). i see lots of investment in the search group and i would hope the same catch-and-pass game would come true to search.

had a chance to try out the latest microsoft search brand kumo, feel it has many details that the search portal put together. the map search has definately improved, so are the user experiences, etc. Another cool thing about kumo is the mouse over feature, it retrieves the content from the result page so you can view it without leaving the search page, as well as other topics on that page.

http://shenghuo.google.cn/shenghuo/fw_shanghai/

this site covers: ?? ?? ?? ???? ??

for a number of cities in china. to me, this is a great tool to search for daily classified ads and i will definatly use it often.

This brings to a thought that how a small business can compete with the giant? this is a perfect example of bigger gets bigger and winner takes all game. a small business should look for opportunities that would avoid heads on competition with the giant (at least initially). this could include being more focus on a domain area that you can claim you have the best domain knowledge that the giants either dont have or they do not feel leucretive enough for them to get into the business without big investiment that may not results in the sound return on investment. a small business also needs to have a great idea that the giants may overlook, and quickly build customer base such that when the giants wake up on that field, it is too late that they have a huge gap in terms of customer base and reputation. here creative idea is very important.