On Wednesday I posted regarding Microsoft's challenge to beat Google in 6 months as did many other bloggers and new sources. This all came about after an interview with Neil Holloway. In their surpirse and shock to all the media frenzy, The Microsoft Search Team has responded on their blog.

A few excerpts:

"We are committed to building the world’s best search engine which helps you get your answers as quickly as possible – and we are excited to spend many years continuing to innovate on our customer’s behalf."

"When you talk about basic web relevancy, our customers report that we’ve made some great progress over the past year, and I know that our research and engineering pipeline is overflowing with intriguing ideas that we will test and release as they’re ready."

"...we won’t try to predict the progress of our competitors and so we won't forecast when we might take the lead, but this is a long term game and we are committed to helping drive the next wave of innovation in search for our customers."

I like how they say "we might take the lead." Much different from prior statements that "we will take the lead in a certain amount of time."