google reader updated–for the worse

So today I was notified that Google Reader has been updated with a new interface! Brilliant I thought; I love new stuff and the reader was beginning to look a little long in the tooth. But as soon as it loaded I though: dang, that’s not an improvement! It looks alright, but too much screen realestate is lost to navigation or whatever.. Take a look at the pic below:

There are a total of 3 rows of navigation/toolbars, that’s just too much for me! The row with the red button on (it says “Abonner”) should be merged with the one above; that would help a lot. As it stands right now I’m not happy with the new interface…

Update: It’s also dead slow and often does not respond at all… Not happy!

What’s wrong with Live Search?

Lately I’ve tested a few searches on both Google and Live Search, just too see if Microsoft has improved. My conclusion is dead simple: Google is FAR superior to Live Search. No question about it… Let me illustrate it with two examples:

1. I wanted to log into my MSDN Subscriptions page to see what was available to me now. So I do this search using Live:
msdn subscribtion
As is clear to all, I made a typo. Not an uncommon thing for me, or anybody else I guess… But the result from Live Search was the surprise:

First of all; why the heck am I getting some Turkish and French pages in my result? And why does it not offer a “Did you mean…” option? See the same result on Google:

So, not only does Google find what I was looking for (search number 1), but Google suggests that I might have been looking for “msdn subscription”; as I indeed was. Why does not Live Search do this? Why?

2. I was looking into buying some HD-DVDs from Amazon, since they are having a fire sale, but I needed to know the exchange rate for USD vs. NOK. So I did this search:
“Convert 20 USD to NOK”

Lets compare the results; Live Search first:

And then Google:

Which is better? In my mind there is no question about it. Google gives me the result right up front, whilst with Live I have to click on the XE.com link to get the result. Now, Google might not give me 100% accurate exchange rate, but I don’t care about that. 95% is ok by me. But what really, really bother me is that Live seams to understand that I’m trying to convert USD to NOK, since the XE.com link will actually take me to a page that shows me the conversion, but why isn’t that info on the actual results page? Why?

Seriously, IF Microsoft is serious about getting people to stop using Google and start using Live search they have to fix these kinds of issues. They are keeping me from using Live, that’s for sure.