As usual, CNN Money can’t catch a clue. In the article referenced above, David Kirkpatrick, Fortune senior editor, waxes enthusiastic about Microsoft’s attempt at Google-style search, live.com.

So I tried it. I searched for “Thotzy”, a challenging enough item, it appears.

Here is the “live.com” result followed by the Google result for exactly the same search:

Note that the results that “live” returns are the contents of an ad, not the site contents.  Smooth move.

And then check out the “search tip” — “live” is so much as admitting that their search is too dim to recognize a stock symbol without prompting.

The funny thing is that it isn’t actually that dimwit — both “live” and Google returned comparable results with identical ticker-symbol searches.

And here are Google’s results for the same search:

Google’s results contain actual content, not ad text, and there are a lot more results.

Good fact-checking, CNN.

The article goes on to assert that all MS wants from Yahoo is the brand -- that MS would not use Yahoo search technology (which is mostly Google’s at this point). The intent is to acquire Yahoo’s customer base.

Sure – like that’s going to happen. The day MS takes over the Yahoo brand, most of Yahoo’s customers will start searching somewhere else, because MS’s search will suck. And even if it didn’t suck, most folks will sensibly assume that it will suck, because it is associated with Microsoft.

MS seems to still be mired in the “lock-in” mentality it has used on the desktop -- it is looking for a captive set of customers to milk. But the Web isn’t about captive customers, it’s about choice and competition.

That isn’t news, of course, except to MS and CNNMoney.