Bill Gates may be the world's most generous philanthropist, but the technical teams under his charge could experience a more uncharitable side of his nature today.

In the 30 minutes Times Online spent test driving Microsoft's long-awaited search engine, launched today as a test site, it broke down eight times.

It was not the most scientific of tests, but then nor was it an auspicious start for the product Microsoft is backing to capture a share of the $5 billion paid-search advertising market. Especially when you consider the competition.

Paid-search sites make money by charging website owners a fee to have their site appear at the top of the list when users search for certain key words. At present the market is dominated by Google, which has continued to increase its share of the market - even since Yahoo launched its own product in Febuary.

That Microsoft is hoping to emulate Google - and attract some of the 80 million people who visit it each month - is clear from the new site's design. Sleek and uncluttered, it aims to provide users with the same easy-to-use format. There is also a relatively intuitive "advanced search" option, an encyclopedia function, and an option that allows you to limit your search to the appropriate territory (in our case, the UK) – again just like Google.

Meanwhile, Microsoft also offers a new news service, which brings together a selection of reports from different sources and which, if anything, is more effectively presented than Google's offering.

But how did Microsoft's test site compare to Google in searching the web?

In the name of testing both sites to destruction, we opted to place ourselves in the shoes of a tourist planning to visit the place with the longest name in the British Isles, but was unsure of how to spell Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

A search for "Llanfair" on Google immediately brought up 94,800 websites, the second of which included the full name that we were looking for in the explanatory text below the link.

A search for the full name then brought up more than 9,000 websites – again instantaneously.

In stark contrast, searches for both the terms caused the Microsoft site to stall for a few seconds before the "search" engine announced: "This site is temporarily unavailable, please check back soon."

We received the same advice when switching between the pages of those results that did appear and when searching for other words.

So far so uninspiring. But Microsoft's troubles may not end there. Experts have suggested that the new site could spell trouble for website managers - as well as disgruntled surfers and paying advertisers.

Deri Jones, the chief executive of SciVisum, the internet testing specialist, has predicted that Microsoft's search "robots" - the behind-the-scenes parts of a search engine that download pages - could slow down the whole internet.

"Problems in Microsoft robots could cause slow down for real users if they perform too aggressively, grabbing too many pages too quickly and thus inadvertently 'stress-testing' web sites," he told Times Online.

This could also result in millions of users being asked to "try again later".

Microsoft's aim is to handle two billion daily search queries. The problem for Mr Gates is that in an era when users have become used to summoning reams of information in fractions of a second, you don't get very many second chances.

To read other readers' experiences with the new Microsoft search function, click here

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