MSN Live Search Adds A Captcha

Yes, I know the previous post published without being finished. I'll have to fix that some time soon.

For some strange reason, I can't get to Google today.  No Google search, no Google Adsense, no Google webmaster tools, no GMail which really is an issue.  Nothing.

So anyway, I still have things to do today.  I guess I have to to use another search engine to get some work done.

I've used MSN a number of times previously, usually to see how different search engines compare with certain search terms.  So I headed over to MSN.com to give it a try.

Imagine my complete surprise when the above captcha pops up. Not once, not twice but every single time I did a search.  And it wasn't an easy captcha either but captchas with other characters in the background, making it harder to read. (At least for me.)

Now, I'm not a big fan of captchas.  I've noticed that they really don't work and are easy to beat.  MSN isn't alone with their use either.  Google's done it before, recently as well, and they're not that easy to read either. (Rather long if you ask me.) I don't see it that often though on Google.  And it didn't take 5 tries that it did with some of MSN's.