I just finished reading a 150-ish post backlog of Scoblebabble (like it? I did…), and saw his post about opening up the MSN search engine for developers to create “plugins” to provide additional “data tiles”.

I have to say, I’m all for this idea. Sure I still use Google, just because it’s there. Honestly, the results between search engines aren’t significantly different enough to get me to change. However, if MSN took Google’s customized homepage idea and expanded it to their actual search results, allowing me to add and remove, drag and drop blocks of information about results, now THAT would be kick ass. If I had a selection of 10 different tiles and 10 different pieces of data to be included for each individual search result, I’d sure as hell switch to MSN.

As Scoble said in another post on the matter later on:

Anyway, this demonstrates just how difficult it is to make a great search engine. Those pesky users always wanting more.

I agree 100%. And let’s face it… There’s never going to be a one-size-fits-all search engine that makes everyone happy. You want Stock quotes because you watch money programs that include them… I don’t have enough money to care about stock quotes, so I don’t want to see them. If I were able to customize my search results to remove those stock quotes and instead add in something like… say… Newegg prices for items similar to my search, THAT would be totally kick ass!

Sure the Newegg results might not be feasable, but I’ll be Amazon results would be… The point is, I could customize my searching experience, making it the most beneficial and enjoyable for MY needs… not the needs of every other shmuck on the ‘net. Add in some Ajax goodness and let me save my preferences, and I’m a sold customer. This really seems so simple, I’m surprised no one has done it already!

You’re on the right track Scoble! Combine this new kick-ass customizeable search feature on MSN with the rest of the tools they’ve developed (I’m seeing an MSN Spaces results tile here… and then a Virtual Earth tile with local results and a map…) and there’s no way I’d ever use Google again! It’d be Microsoft domination of the internet, which honestly seems like a better prospect than Google domination if you ask me…