Lookout acquisition - lame decision after all
Microsoft is in the search business for 10 years by now.
It started with the poor search included in the first Windows versions, “improved” with Indexing Service (another lame marketing decision, since it was bought).
They also have an SQL server (with supposed magnificent search features), an implementation of an (optimized?) search algorithm included in .NET framework, the Jet (Access) engine, recommended for a reduced number of queries. They can search for a word even in the Internet Exploder documents.
You can’t become a Redmond code monkey without a CS degree and these guys are supposed to read Knuth’s bible each evening. All of them know how to search in the most elementary way, e.g. inside a sorted array.
The crown of their search technology is the lame MSN portal (it was bought, part of the technology was rented etc.) No logical human uses their search engine, because, if you insist for the rudest adds, you have to use Yahoo!.
The Longhorn WinFS is predicted to sort and search for mp3’s better and for many criteria (such as the gender of the singer and his eye color.)
After all, I saw the advanced search feature in Outlook 2003 and it builds SQL statements (a lovely feature, but not for Average User Joe). Lookout is supposed to be a faster search solution for Outlook, but Microsoft people, knowing their source code, were supposed to outperform anyone.
The IP (patents) and market share of MSN, Indexing Service and Lookout, at the moment of their acqusitions, are/were little over zero (if any). The acquisition of Lookout proves that the MS guys don’t know how to search or that they just don’t care.
Then, why would anyone count for their in-house developed WinFS search as a feature of Longhorn? Perhaps we should already think of it as a failure.