New face of MSN search?

The possible new incarnation of MSN's front page just got posted on slashdot. In fact this is just a test page - or one of many test pages they have put online recently. It's interesting. It shows that they finally are figuring out that the flashing ads at msn page are freaking stupid, and annoying.

For what it's worth they still have way to much crap on their page. What's great about google is the fact that they totally grasp the kiss principle. Their front page is clean, and nice. There is no crap all over the place. No screwy scripts, no obtrusive shits jumping out at you. It's brilliant in it's simplicity - and yet Google manages to pack so many features in it. And I can google using lynx! There is no way in hell MS start will render in lynx. But then again MS does not care because they are on a mission to take over the world :P

This page tries to be some sort of information center pooling RSS feeds from interesting places, displaying weather. Which seems like a Yahoo thing to do. So in essence they are trying to be both Yahoo, and Google at the same time. And that cannot be done. Yahoo has distracting garbage on front page, google has zero distractions. You pick one or the other. Otherwise you end up in the same place as you were before - MSN clutter which will end up being covered by flashing ads as soon as you realize no one wants start.com as their home page. I don't think they will be able to maintain this level of simplicity for too long.

Of course the page does not validate but I guess that was to be expected.

Btw - if you havent noticed, the start page is a freakin RIPOFF! Compare it to Google's personalization feature. It figures...

I guess the message here is - MS finally figured out that Google had the best idea out there, so they decided to take it, and use it for their purposes. Next thing on their agenda is probably patenting news aggregation via RSS on the front page of a search engine (if that's not already patented by them) :P

Tags: msn, start, msn start page, google is better