MSN NEWS BOT & GOOGLE NEWS Comparison

People are getting more voracious for news these days. To satisfy the online news appetitie there are several sites scuh as Google News, Yahoo News, Newstrove, Moreover News Services , Topix.net and now MSN with their News Bot. Microsoft has just launched the beta test of Newsbot, a customized search-driven news . MSN News Bot offers personalization by searching on topics, and the service suggests stories based on what visitors have previously read.

But I find Google News more usefriendly and systematic, why doesn't Microsoft employ some good usability expert who can enlighten them on inetrface designing.

I compared MSN and Google News by searching for India on both MSN Newsbot & Google News and found that on Newsbot results obtained were containing mostly yesterdays Criket Match headlines, whereas the google had identified them to be same and related, And arranged the other related news links below the the first result itself instead of showing different criket headlines.

Right now I cannot see the advantage of a search history on MSN but I do see the advantage of finding the related stories covered by different news sources. Is history really so useful ? , 'cos mostly people will be using one or two words to make the searches and not some complex string and may be they would be using the same search words daily. But on the other side the collections of history links would be a sure advantage for some people who might be drilling for something more specfic or 'hard to find info / not so populated topic' and trying different combinations.

The the advantage of MSN Newsbot over Google News is that Newsbot has more sections and topics in the navigation and makes use of Java Scripts so that you can navigate the respective sections > subsections > and related headlines just over the roll of your mouse.

One thing leaves me confusing , what does Microsoft wants to become, it is confused about its own identity or doing some sourch searching.
- Is there a need for Microsoft to become the next google ?
- Is Microsoft really seeing a great opportunity in News and Search Engines market ?
- Or simply it doesn't have anything else to do ?

Microsoft has started a online mag slate and is now thinking of wiping it off. Why it doesn't concentrate on Browser Wars and try to give some peace to the exisitng users of Internet Explorer who are under constant threat. Microsoft seems to be concentrating on Mass or larger share of consumer market, even its patents are also very pathetic. With the kind of cash it has, it should now support real technological inventions or innovations.



And last but not the least I hate both of them for not providing the syndication feature through RSS.