Microsoft wants to regain lost market share, but Google won’t relent as each
test new search interfaces.
Google is testing a new search interface featuring green bar graphs on the
left side of the screen that represent the number of search results in various categories, including Images, Groups, News and Froogle.
Microsoft’s Live.com is in beta testing and is available to anyone.
Features
include RSS feeds for each search, image results that load live as you
scroll, and a sliding scale to manage the amount of information displayed
for every result.
Microsoft and Google have long been mired in a features war to help improve their respective search offerings.
Google added an RSS reader and a news aggregator to its list of goodies.
Microsoft, meanwhile, introduced MSN
adCenter in September, and in November it delivered an enterprise version of its desktop search.
But still, Google dominates the pure search field while Microsoft struggles.
According to comScore, Google has gained year-over-year market share, moving
from
36.3 percent to 42.3 percent, while Microsoft slid from 16.3 percent to 13.5
percent.