MSN search goes local

MSN launched its revamped search engine a little while back to largely indifference. Now MSN Ireland claims to have localised the search and, sad to report, there's not much new to it either, getting trounced on many fronts by Google - feature count and relevance to name a few.

So what's this localisation all about? Well, search for "government" and you'd hope the engine would be smart enough to know you mean the Irish government. But no. In fairness, neither does Google - and at least the right result appears second in both cases.

Most galling is the claim in the PR spiel that "it is the first ever search engine built from the ground up". Oh yeah? I'm no expert but I'd wager Yahoo! Altavista and Google would have something to say about that.