The new Windows Live Search came out today.
I have to say, without looking to deep into any sort of special features (since I'm a fairly boring user of search engines), that I think they've nailed it.
I can't say I think it's any better than Google (and of course, it looks extremely similar to Google), but much like C# I think they've finally got web search that doesn't suck. Or at least they haven't screwed up the conversion from the other guy's equivalent.
One curious little feature I noted (sure to have pudge and other sports fans interested) is that Live Search appears to have some level of ability to do custom rendering of the search results.
For example, if I do a vanity search on myself, the typical first place result for the Major League baseball player I share a name, birth year, height and weight with, has not only the basics, but a mugshot, and tiny embedded baseball statistics section.
I do have a mild suspition of an artificially high rating, given that the real estate agent I share a name with is on top for Google, and what are the odds of branded content from another MSN site just happening to be first on Live...
But then it is valid content, and the idea of custom-rendered content for particular sites is at least novel.
