The poop-smiths over at MSN have shovelled another load into print about the problems with Google. Sure, Google does have some idiosyncrasies, but most can be overcome by adding a second word to refine your search. As far as I can tell, this would nearly negate the first two complaints. Besides, I’ve used MSN – you can’t tell me they’re worried too much about commercial links or skewed results.
The third complaint is somewhat confusing, because if you were looking for a book, you’d probably have found it in one of the above-mentioned commercial links. I doubt that copyright holders will be that thrilled about the ability to search the text of books. However, Microsoft, soon to enter the fiction and scholarly journal-publishing realm, will surely sell you access to these tomes.