Damn, I saw some people talking about how much better Microsoft’s Live Search was and I just tried a few searches and, indeed, it’s a lot better than it used to be. They’ve significantly closed the gap with Google.

Microsoft's new version of Live is 4 times bigger than the previous version that was revealed via a press release
I tried it out myself and I like it. I think again the value proposition is in how Microsoft seems to understand how to integrate search into all its products. I personally like the rich client user experience of Live Mail which is now a click on the messenger to get your email.  Try it out here

How does it do on your favorite searches? I even picked out a random Windows API call and did a search on that. MSN used to always suck on those. But Live.com gets it right.

It’s also fast and the UI is nice. I think it matches Google all the way around on search.

Google is still slightly better on some searches (I think the result set on Google for Scrapbooking Blog is better than that on Live.com for Scrapbooking Blog, for instance). But, it’s much harder to tell the difference than it used to be. Live.com even does well with all my stock quotes (it used to be far less consistent than Google) and on my ego search for “scoble” Live.com is much better than Google (Live.com lists my current blog first, Google lists my blog that I haven’t posted to for a year first).

How does it do on your searches?

Now, the problem is, if Microsoft matches Google, who will switch away from Google? I will use both I don't care I am not married with Google and if live is as good as google I will use it. Plus the fact that it is already built in the I.E  7 toolbar, mean that I don't have to download a third party app that could crash my browser.