the new microsoft search portal kumo
microsoft has been very successful playing the catch up game previously, from office suite, visual studio development IDE, to winning the browser war with netscape, and up coming xbox game sectors, but this has not yet happened in the search portal. although microsoft spent tons of dollars on search, the performance is by far disappointing.
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.