buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, err Poppycock, err Crunch N Munch, err some of the Kernals' delicious popcorn.

"If you rebuild it, they will succumb".
__from the "Field of Schemes"

"Imagine seeing maps plus pics from the neighbourhood of a restaurant to try"

Wow! I can really imagine it! Or wait, maybe I'm just remembering using Google maps earlier today... yeahhh.

I remember people thinking that Microsoft was in a losing venture with its XBox platform too. Who knows, maybe they'll come out on top, or second in command. They have the resources to do it definitely.

I really think that Microsoft has quite enough money, and so do not see the point of exposing myself to more Microsoft-centric propaganda/advertising/whatever by patronizing their "johnny-come-lately" search engine and adding yet more dollars to their bank accounts.

I do get a kick out of their carefully-crafted "all shiny and new" exciting press releases. After all:

- Bing is just spray-painted Yahoo (with a Microsoft slant - what will they to with all of your search log records?).

- Windows 7 is just spray-painted Vista (or Mojave-2, Vista SP2, or whatever). Glorified WinNT (and insecure to boot).

Since Yahoo has been borged -- I mean "binged" -- that leaves Google, who has adopted the business ethic of "do no evil". Of course, Microsoft seems to have few business ethics, therefore I hope people continue to use Google, and let Bing fail like so many lines of IE6-specific "MS-HTML". None of this is important if people just ignore them and go about their business using Firefox, Opera, or Safari and OpenOffice on their WinXP, Linux or Mac systems.