This morning I came across an article that asks whether Windows Live is better than Google. I blogged about Windows Live late last year and thought there were a couple of things that it did quite well. The Technology Review article highlights the ability of Windows Live Search to launch multiple search panes in a single window. No one should be particularly impressed by this because tabbed browsing has been a feature of Firefox and Opera for a really long time. Internet Explorer 7 (which still isn’t out yet) is the first version of Microsoft’s browser that will actually have tabbed browsing built in. The article also highlights the ability to view pictures at different sizes without leaving the search page, something Google has probably been doing for awhile already.
The article spends very little time on what is ultimately the most important thing about any search engine: relevant results. Bells and whistles mean nothing if you don’t get results you can use. I’ll do a side-by-side comparison for my own searches for a bit to see if Windows Live is giving me results as useful as Google’s.