Dream of a better MSN search engine is broken, Microsoft changes tone overnight.

In a sort of damage control exercise, the MSN search team is now distancing itself from it's European chief comments that Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months.

"What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google" - these were the exact words of Neil Holloway but now Neil says that neither did he put a date nor said that we would be ‘twice as good as Google’.

Nick Farrell doesn't agree to the theory that Neil was misquoted, as he was in a room full of journalists at a conference sponsored by Reuters.

Ken Moss, general manager of MSN Search Development and Testing, further clarifies that "we won’t try to predict the progress of our competitors and so we won't forecast when we might take the lead".

Jonathan Berr remarks on Microsoft's failure to break the stranglehold on the search market held Google. MSN also lags behind Yahoo! and Time Warner's AOL in terms of unique visitors.