MSN Launches New Search Engine

The search engine wars just got a little more exciting. Many people in the web industry knew that MSN was planning something for quite sometime, but now the press is out on MSN's latest entry into the search engine race. Still it is only in the beta testing stage but it means that both Yahoo and Google are going to have to stay on their toes. Yahoo currently provides MSN's search results and this could mean a loss of their market share. For Google it means the 800 pound gorilla which is Mircosoft is now something else to worry about. Microsoft doesn't necessarily produce the best products but wins through our dependency on Windows. Netscape feel to Internet Explorer because the Windows operating system had it built in. It is rumored that Longhorn the code name for newest version of Windows will have a search engine built in, thus why would people go to Google if their computer can save them the step. For those in the real estate industry it is not a bad thing. Google has gone too long without any real competition and it seemed to place an emphasis on profits over quality search results. Many quality real estate sites are still suffering from Google's Florida update, which over night saw 90% of the top commercial sites disappear from the search results in order to force commercial sites to pay for advertising. Ottawa Real Estate Agents (ottawa-real-estate-agents.com) marketing rep. says "Hopefully, with MSN's new search engine both Google and Yahoo will have to produce better results or they will fade the way of Excite or Webcrawler."
Regardless of what happens it is an interesting time for all.

Bush's Election and Real Estate

On Nov. 3/04 George Bush narrowly avoided a repeat of what happened in the 2000 election and was re-elected as president of the United States. Whether we like George Bush or not, no longer matters because we are stuck with him for another four more years. For those in the real estate industry this might not be a bad thing. One of President Bush's focuses was to make sure that more people could live in their own homes. This will see "...more new home construction" (quote from Boca Raton real estate rep.) and we see policies that keep the US dollar weak and interest rates low. As well, Bush favors lower taxes which means more of the individual's household income can be devoted to home mortgages. Possibly we may see many people carrying larger debt loads which could be dangerous if interest rates were to rise.

Hopefully, we will see a continued real estate boom and continued record low interest rates to support it for the next few years.