A while ago, I predicted, in an earlier post, that 2006 would be the year Microsoft and Google would have their final battle to see who would be the biggest contender on the Web.

Bill Gates isn’t too keen on Google and figured they would be gone within a couple years of their beginning. Well, we know how it went and today Google is the all powerful search engine on the Net. What really made Microsoft mad was that they were writing software, giving it free, and even having it integrate with the desktop: Microsoft’s domain.

Microsoft didn’t take that too lightly. It launched its own search engine in late 2004. Two years later and Google still reigns supreme with MSN a distant third.

Microsoft failed at the search engine front and it seemed that its attempts to take down Google were over.

However, Microsoft now says it will release a new search engine in 6 months that will be better than Google. It will be released in the US and England with France and Germany following soon after..

Microsoft isn’t aiming to simply display websites when someone does a search. Neil Holloway, president for Microsoft in Europe, claim that the search engine will be able to “dig down” so that it can find specific information.

He states, “Generally these days what you get back is URLs, and based upon research 50 percent of the time you do a search you don’t get the URL you’re looking for.”

For example, the search engine would be able to find a specific resturant with a kind of menu the person wants within a specific geographical area.

That’s all great. But will it beat Google? Is Microsoft over-hyping the new search engine? Remember that Google not only offers a decent, if not the best search experience at the moment, but that it also has many free and paid services that many people use.

I’m not sure that a highly relavent search engine would work. After all, the results can only be relevant if there web content exisits for a person’s search. Even if it does work and is better then Google (they claim it to be two times better), would people be leaving Google in droves?

I don’t think so. But this is the battle we were expecting for. We’ll wait the long 6 months and see if Microsoft’s new search engine is just hype or if it really can defeat Google in the long hall.

News Story: Reuters.com

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