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After officially confirming the acquisition of Powerset – the search engine startup that will help Microsoft improve search results for its Live search engine, Microsoft comes up with news that made us wonder whether they actually try to become a Google clone.

It’s pretty obvious that Microsoft tries hard to come from its third place in search closer to Google. Their unsuccessful attempts of purchasing Yahoo! prove it. But monkey behavior? Who would expect such a thing?

Microsoft decided to flatter Google by imitating their most successful algorithm: the PageRank. They even spent time in elaborating a new system called BrowseRank that will “bring a human touch” to assigning Web page priority based on how people actually use the site.

What does Microsoft aim at with this “new” ranking system? No more and no less than stealing Google’s “PageRank” thunder.

What Microsoft seems to forget is that Google doesn’t rely solely on PageRank algorithms to determine the importance of a web page. With the link building schemes abounding on the Internet, Google actually changed the PR formula and it’s only using PageRank in addition to more than 200 different signals to determine the ranking of a website in the search results. Microsoft believes that Google’s PageRank system can be gamed, forgetting that Google is actually constantly monitoring the indexed websites and that the search giant is actually penalizing sites for getting involved in link schemes like link farms, link purchasing, link selling, etc. Microsoft also believes that Google doesn’t take into account the time a user spends on a particular website – which is erroneous. Google actually counts on user behavior to rank web pages – we don’t need a rocket scientist to confirm this.

Remember that Google improves its search algorithms constantly – there are over 100 recent updates we know about, and 450 changes in 2007 alone. The search giant doesn’t need to constantly brag about its “algorithm updates” to grab attention. If Microsoft would actually come up with something original… well, that would be worth the time and attention.

With Powerset in the Microsoft family we could actually assist to better search results in Microsoft’s network of search engines. But the companies need time to implement the new search technologies and time is something Google can easily beat. Google has the biggest research team devoted to search and of course the largest infrastructure. Are Microsoft’s attempts actually worth the buzz? We think they are. At least they prove that Microsoft awakens from its lethargy.