Bill Gates said last month that Google is kicking Microsoft’s butts in the search engine world, MSN is planning the launch of a new search engine and in house search advertising solution, and MSN is making bounds to improve the all around feel of their online community. And then comes a potential killer – Hotmail and MSN Messenger crashes. Microsoft Corp admits that a “significant portion” of people who use the company’s Hotmail email system and other internet-based products had trouble accessing the services on Friday.
According to Microsoft, the problem was not a virus or attack on the MSN network- is was an internal problem. In addition to Hotmail, the popular web based email service, Microsoft said people were having difficulties accessing products such as company’s MSN Messenger instant messaging program. Last year, MSN shut down its free chatrooms to direct members to Instant Messaging. Services have been restored over the weekend.
The question is not whether MSN’s services are failing, many web site owners have experienced server outages and deny of service problems due to huge amounts of traffic or database crunches. But MSN… during the search engine wars, while competing head to head with Yahoo and others to build and maintain their huge networks.
On the dawn of the expected launch of a new MSN Search, the MSN portal’s two popular services crash; leaving perhaps millions out in the cold for at least one day. For the people at MSN, hopefully that one day will be forgotten… and not MSN’s credibility.
According to a report last week, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is set to challenge the dominance of Google with his own high-powered search engine, which has been in secret development for more than a year. A Microsoft spokesman said: “Microsoft believes that the search engine experience can be dramatically improved and we are investing significant financial and human resources in a new type of search engine that will be a major improvement on existing offerings.” Hopefully their future searchers will not weigh the effectiveness of MSN last week when judging the dramatically improved MSN.
More than a year ago, Microsoft built what the software industry calls an “algorithmic crawler” – nicknamed a “spider” – to assemble a vast index of websites. After long months of combing the web, and assisted by a large team of programers, the spider’s work is nearing completion.
Just as MSN sets the table for a new MSN Search launch – joining the ranks of Yahoo and Google in the Search Engine War, their gas tanks run on empty for a day. Makes you wonder how many MSN members opened up Yahoo email accounts last week and over the weekend.
I’m _no_ fan of MS by any means, but this is a pretty overstated article by someone with a lot vigor to make a reckless point for some reason. Believe it or not but evening the biggest of sites have problems every now and then. If this is MSN’s only outage for this year, I’d point out that the aprox. 15hrs. they were down would still give them an uptime of .99828 for peat sake.
Richard, as a MSN user, do you feel that you use the MSN search engine more than other engines like Google or Ask Jeeves?
You bring up an excellent point in the email address ownership question. Don’t think it will happen, but very interesting idea.
Much thanks, Loren
I partly agree with “anonymous”, but this “minor” outage illustrates the inherent risks of monoculture. If the Microsoft fantasy of becoming gatekeepers to the internet (any our wallets) in any way becomes a reality, this kind of “minor” outage will have massive econoimic consequences, for which Microsoft will not take no responsibility.
99.8% uptime (_if_ this is the only outage this year – which it isn’t). That’s not enough for any serious communication system. “Five nines” – 99.999% is the standard. That’s 5 minutes downtime per year.
I’m not saying anyone offers that – but it should be the benchmark we compare them against.
You pointed out in your article that MSN’s recent outage “Makes you wonder how many MSN members opened up Yahoo email accounts last week and over the weekend”. For the past 5 years I have maintained accounts at both MSN & Yahoo. I see the ISP’s as service providers, similar to the gas & electric companies that, for a fee, make my life easier on a daily basis. Why rag on Microsoft? What is this perception that they need to be perfect 100% of the time. Can we apply that same standard to the regional electicity providers. After all how may of us have a flashlight or two handy when the enevitable minor outage leaves us without power in our house.
no one… is going to switch to yahoo folks.. hotmail is ubiquitous.. yahoo is a joke
anyone who knows about profitability and business knows that yahoo is lost..
internet advertising? pfft..
Microsft rules the earth!!
This is the first time I’ve noticed Hotmail unavailable for a long time, atleast in a year, and you know what? It didn’t bother me one bit.
I’m not the type of person to perform knee-jerk reactions every time there is a minor inconvenience, unlike many DishNetwork subscribers that let a lack of a few channels for two days last week make them decide to switch over to a soon-to-be bankrupt competitor who DishNetwork will ultimately own.
this is all part of what microsoft is realy going for. Taking control of your computer
check out this site http://www.notcpa.org/about.html
Wow, how great that MS “believes that the search engine experience can be dramatically improved…” And we’re in such luck that Bill Gates is there at the reins. I, for one, will continue to use Google exclusively, because I’m fed up with the rest of the computer world that MS has already screwed up (i.e. browsers, java, stable operatings systems, etc.).
15 Hr. down ? … I smell a rat . It seems to my as a controled shuting down of this main messaging route to either observe alternate flow or do other testing perhaps in colaboration with NSA .
Having a Hotmail account is extremely useful and to be honest, I don’t know many people who only have ONE email address. If Hotmail is down temporarily and you need to get an email out simply send it from an alternate account.
As far as Microsoft and Google? I really don’t think that Google can maintain the stronghold that they have on the SE market. Microsoft is just too big a player to be “shut out” in such a huge industry. Quite frankly, I’ll be happier when Google isn’t the biggest game in town anymore as their alogarithm changes can make you pull out your hair! =)
Jason
I agree with Jason, Google changes the way they rank pages way too much, it’s almost impossible to keep up with it without shelling out big money to SEO’s who depend on this. I’ve noticed that Google doesn’t even (page) rank my sites anymore, even though they technically should be up around 2-4.
Some one hacked my hotmail acount please tell me what can i doo.
THANK YOU
actually it wus 6.2 not 6.3
i am having problems signing i think msn hotmail should decide soon if free service is killing them or merge with yahoo
the main thing wrong with msn currently is that is just wont show when people are talking to you or when your talking to them..i tremendouoly want to be able to get back on msn mesenger properally..please fix asap!!
I LOVE YOU BOBBY WILKERSON..
Yahoo is the best one folks. Hotmail is ubiquitous
anyone who knows about profitability and business knows that yahoo is the best one
Finding your websight was like finding a needle in a haystack.
Great work with this one, nicelly done!
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