NP: iTunes DJ

Microsoft has a "new" search engine on the way, or maybe a revision to an old search engine, or something like that, and Wired gets suckered into the "how to they beat Google" meme.

This seems to miss the point. As Steve Ballmer points out, it's about market share, and you don't necessarily have to take market share from the market leader. At least not in great quantities. If Microsoft can, say, beat the living crap out of Ask.com with its new offering, that gets them more market share than they have now. The important question -- as it was with Ask.com when they rolled out their vertical strategy back in the winter -- is "what does success look like for a non-Google search engine?"

If the goal is to displace Google as the number one search engine, then you're not likely to succeed any time soon. So, would an improvement of 5% share be good? 10%? That's what needs to be addressed when analyzing the new Microsoft search.