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After many months of development, MSN launches MSN Spaces.
Was 2004 the year of the blog? If it was, MSN has found a great way to end it with a bang with its new blog service, MSN Spaces.
After leaping into search last month and offering a news search service this fall, MSN has taken a much needed step into the online network realm and more or less updated themselves from a dusty old ad ridden web network to a major innovator with blogs.
MSN Spaces, is now open for public testing in beta and bloggers should have a great time figuring it out. MSN’s blog service will be funded by advertising, there is no word on if Overture will be providing contextually based ads.
People with MSN Messenger or Hotmail accounts will get the service for free. The AP reports that “Microsoft is closely linking MSN Spaces with its Messenger and Hotmail programs on the premise that people will hop from one Microsoft product to another for online communications.”
Users can set up a system that alerts friends on MSN Messenger when they have new blog entries. Bloggers can choose to restrict access to a select group of friends and family, but guests will need to use Microsoft’s “Passport” to log in. Blogs can also be updated via MSN email or messenger.
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, only 6 percent of adult Americans have created blogs, while 17 percent have read those of others. Between Google’s Blogger and other popular blog services, MSN should help grow that number. Will Yahoo be next to adapt their Korean Yahoo Blog service to a US audience?
Neowin reports that Microsoft’s goal with the project is to make getting (and running) a blog as simple as any other task.
After a simple signup process (you pick a name and url) you’re ready to tell the world your views.
Spaces have most of the common features seen on blogs (RSS, track back, etc) and a few more. Microsoft offers a variety of themes, ranging from the default, to a variety of others.
The 15 custom built themes were created by none other than The Skins Factory. The Skins Factory have been responsible for a number of high profile Windows Media Player skins too.
Source: Search Engine Journal
The Rosette Linguistics Platform provides MSN with the ability to better handle foreign languages used in a search.
One example is the quote all news and forums are using from a press release:
Rosette performs linguistic analysis that helps information retrieval applications understand search queries.
For example, Rosette identifies individual words for languages such as Japanese that do not use spaces between words, breaks compound words into their individual components, and identifies parts-of-speech such as verb, adjective, etc.
This information increases the accuracy of search results.
This is also common in German, where they often join two words into one (i think), such as “webdesign".
An other useful quote from the press release is “The Rosette Linguistics Platform uses state of the art Natural Language Processing techniques to improve information retrieval, text mining and other applications and apply them to global markets.
Rosette provides capabilities like identifying the language of incoming text, providing a normalized representation in Unicode, and locating names, places and other key concepts.”
Source: Search Engine Journal
Microsoft is expected to launch its much-anticipated search engine tomorrow, as it increases its efforts in trying to beat Google in the business of search.
The new search engine will go live on the company's MSN Web site, a representative for the company said.
The software giant has made clear its plans to conquer the lucrative search market, teasing industry watchers with Web and desktop search previews.
In June, Microsoft upgraded its MSN Search site and it has been posting new search technology prototypes at its testing site. Meanwhile, company executives have stated their intentions to take Google to the mat.
Now Web users will be able to test-drive the company's latest search efforts. Although details of the new search engine weren't available on Wednesday, SearchEngineWatch.com Editor Danny Sullivan said that he had been playing around with search betas on Microsoft's Sandbox site earlier this week.
"From what I've seen on Sandbox, the technology is still pretty unremarkable," Sullivan said. Although he acknowledged that the search tools he sampled did not have all the "bells and whistles" that are expected with the full release, Sullivan said that some test searches did not bring up authoritative sites that one would expect from a search engine.
"From what I've seen so far, they haven't been savvy in terms of search optimization," Sullivan said.
This could be a major problem for the Redmond, Wash., company if it expects to leap past Google and Yahoo Inc. According to Sullivan, to stand out a new search technology needs to serve up incredibly relevant results, possibly delivered in a new way, such as being able to tap separate databases for different types of searches.
Otherwise, new search engines should build good features if they want to lure in users. "It could be victory by a bunch of little cuts instead of one sword," Sullivan said.
Whatever approach Microsoft ends up taking, it appears determined to pierce the top of the market. MSN Search is already number three in the market, according to Sullivan, so the company is building from a solid user base.
Source: IT World Canada
The world's biggest software company has set a closer date for the delivery of its desktop search program, after Google released a test version of its competing search feature for searching a personal computers' hard disk.
During its earnings call with financial analysts, Microsoft said an MSN-branded tool would be made available before the end of 2004. The tool and an algorithmic Web searching engine will be in beta testing by year's end, a representative said Friday.
"In terms of search, we should see some good MSN search technology in this calendar year, probably late the second half," John Connors, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said in the conference call. "We're going to have a heck of a great race in search between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. It's going to be really fun to follow."
Google beat Microsoft to the punch last week, when it introduced Google Desktop Search, a Windows program that indexes a computer's hard drive to quickly search inside documents and e-mail. Yahoo executives have said the company plans a desktop search tool as well.
Microsoft first demonstrated the technology for its own desktop search tool at a financial analysts' conference in July. At the time, MSN executive Yusuf Mehdi would say only that it would be out before the release of Longhorn, the next version of Windows, scheduled for 2006.
Yahoo and Microsoft have been making acquisitions to boost their capabilities in this area. In July, Microsoft bought Lookout Software, which has a program for searching within Outlook e-mail. Yahoo acquired Oddpost in July and said this week that it would buy Stata Labs.
Google has emerged as a key rival to Microsoft. In addition to the battle over search, the company is seen as a potentially broader competitor in several areas, including the market for Web browsing and instant messaging.
Google also confirmed this week that it is opening an office in Kirkland, Wash., a Seattle suburb not far from Microsoft's Redmond headquarters.
Source: ZD Net
Microsoft on Tuesday is to begin testing a new online news aggregation service, as part of its increasing search competition with Google.
In conjunction with its own MSNBC news site, the software giant is creating a page dubbed "Newsbot" that will draw news headlines from more than 4,800 other sites, in a manner similar to the Google News service.
The page will let visitors create their own customized news feeds that are powered by MSN's new search technology, the company said. (Google News offers something similar, but it calls them customized alerts.)
"By providing a variety of ways to personalize the service, people have more control over how and where they get their news," Yusef Mehdi, corporate vice president of MSN Information Services and Merchant Platform, said in a statement. "We're confident (this) will convince people to return every day, much like a neighborhood newsstand."
Although news aggregation services have been a feature of portal sites such as Yahoo since the mid-1990s, the rise of automatic headline services that are based on Web search technology has added new importance to an old idea.
Google's news service has drawn millions of people eager for up-to-the-minute headlines, while worrying some news executives who fear that readers will visit aggregation sites instead of the original publications' home pages.
Microsoft has been increasingly vocal about its goal of recapturing some of Google's momentum in search and related technologies. It launched a new version of its MSN search tool last month, and is working internally on more advanced search tools capable of scouring PCs and e-mail folders as well as Web sites.
The initial version of the Newsbot site will be a test that's aimed at gauging surfers' reactions, the company said. A final version will be relaunched after the test period.
Microsoft has been testing a similar aggregation service in Europe since late 2003.
Source: C-Net News
At an October 2002 celebration to introduce Microsoft's MSN 8 Internet service, Bill Gates showed a video of himself wearing a butterfly costume and handing out software for the search service.
His point was that after seven years of floundering in the Internet access market, Microsoft would do whatever it took to beat its longtime rival America Online.
That included pouring $500 million into MSN to match AOL's most popular features and another $300 million into marketing, featuring MSN's butterfly mascot and a concert highlighted by rocker Lenny Kravitz singing "Fly Away."
But all that flew away was the better part of a billion dollars. Microsoft's share of the Internet access market has declined steadily since.
In the years since the start of what was first called the Microsoft Network, Gates has tried dozens of business models, from Internet access to Web sites to monthly software subscriptions.
They all had one thing in common: they lost money. Over the last year, however, MSN has finally started to see some profits.
The unit began making money last fall and is expected to post an operating profit of about $200 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, compared with a loss of about $531 million last year.
The reason has little to do with any of Microsoft's more ambitious Internet strategies. Instead, it was one of the businesses that it had put on the back burner -- Internet advertising -- that really started to take off.
Even without a lot of new investment, MSN's Web site has long been the third most popular destination on the Internet, bringing together its Hotmail e-mail service, the MSNBC news operation and a variety of other channels.
Recently, it has worked to repair a frayed relationship with Madison Avenue, putting the company in a good position to gain as the ad market rebounded. Over the last year, MSN has ranked second in online advertising revenue, behind Yahoo and ahead of the longtime leader AOL, a unit of Time Warner.
Mary Meeker, the Morgan Stanley Internet analyst, said that MSN's revival was an indicator of the company's trademark doggedness.
"They began their attack on AOL 10 years ago," she said. "Since then they have lost billions, and now they are making money. It gives me a real sense of just how patient they are."
Now basking in its newfound profitability, MSN is again on the offensive, competing with Yahoo, the Internet portal, even more than with AOL.
It has a three-prong strategy: continue to cash in on the advertising market, sell software services for people who have broadband Internet access from cable or phone companies, and build a better Web search engine.
MSN, which uses Yahoo's search technology, is trying to develop search technology to take on Google. It hopes to introduce that technology by the end of the year.
As investors consider Google's public stock offering, some worry that Microsoft will be able to squeeze out the plucky search company just as it pushed aside Netscape in the Internet browser market. After all, it plans to include links to its new search service on the Windows desktop and in many other products and services.
Yet that same considerable Windows advantage led many observers to predict that Microsoft would cause more trouble than it actually did for AOL and Yahoo. It turned out that most Internet users were willing to skip past the default services offered by Windows in favor of brands they preferred.
"There was a concern that Microsoft would always win because they owned the desktop," said David Card, the research director of Jupiter Research. "If the desktop is so important, then Microsoft should have beaten AOL, but they didn't."
One drag on MSN over the years, said several people who worked there, is that Microsoft has been conflicted about whether to treat the Internet as a media business or a form of software. It is not a simple either-or proposition because so much of the Internet is a hybrid -- free software paid for by advertising.
"One thing that amazed me is that the organization changed annually," said Merrill Brown, the former editor in chief of MSNBC. "They seize upon a good idea, and throw lots of resources at it until it's time to move to the next idea or acquisition."
Microsoft certainly has had some successes on the Internet, including Hotmail, MSNBC (a joint venture with General Electric), the Slate opinion journal and Expedia, the online travel agency it sold to InterActiveCorp.
But there have been at least as many failures, ranging from Mungo Park, an adventure travel site, to the CarPoint automobile buying service, to the controversial Hailstorm system for connecting information from different Web sites.
But Microsoft's biggest online failure has been its Internet access business. It lost several billion dollars over the years by paying people $400 rebates to sign three-year contracts for MSN dial-up accounts, according to Internet industry executives. Those customers have quit the service in droves as their commitments expire.
By contrast, AOL's Internet access business has been hugely profitable, even amid turmoil from its merger with Time Warner and the decline in the dial-up, or narrowband, market.
"We said that narrowband is like the buggy whip business," said David Cole, the Microsoft senior vice president in charge of MSN. "We could try to be the best buggy whip maker, but that's not very aspirational. It's hard to get people rallied around that."
The broadband market, however, has proved exasperating for dial-up providers like MSN, AOL and Earthlink, all of which wanted to buy high-speed connections wholesale and market them to consumers.
After accounting for the customer acquisition costs, the costs paid to telephone companies and the support costs, Cole said, "there is nothing left over."
Microsoft has invested $6 billion in Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, but that has not led to an arrangement to distribute MSN services to Comcast customers. Comcast, in fact, edged out Microsoft this year to become the nation's second-largest Internet provider, with 10 percent of the Internet access market, according to Solomon Research.
Microsoft's share o that market has fallen from a peak of 13 percent in 2002 to 8 percent today. (AOL's share fell to 24 percent from 29 percent in the last two years.) Microsoft claims a total of 8 million subscribers to its various MSN services, of which about 5 million are Internet access customers, according to ComScore Media Metrix, an Internet ratings company.
Now, the company hopes to sell extra services to people who buy broadband service from their local telephone or cable companies. For $5.95 a month, it offers MSN Plus, which mainly expands e-mail services. MSN Premium, for $9.95 a month, adds firewall and virus software, and access to some proprietary content, most notably Webcasts of Major League Baseball games. Microsoft paid a reported $40 million over two years for the baseball rights.
So far, that market has not taken off. Microsoft will not say how many broadband add-on subscriptions it has sold, admitting only that the vast bulk of its users come from deals it has struck with Verizon and Qwest to include MSN software as part of those company's basic broadband services.
Microsoft is also developing more services, including some for small businesses, and a new music download offering meant to compete with Apple's iTunes.
But it is MSN's advertising business that is really starting to pay off.
The company had a reputation on Madison Avenue of being unresponsive and forcing advertisers to use its own proprietary formats. But in late 2001, it hired an experienced magazine executive, Joanne Bradford, to run its advertising sales staff and to reach out to agencies. It also moved to embrace the industry's standard ad formats. As marketers discovered ways to use more interactive ads, MSN was one of the few sites that could deliver a mass audience.
Still, MSN's audience appears to be more transient than those of its rivals. According to ComScore Media Metrix, 111 million people visited some part of MSN at least once in May. That is just slightly behind Yahoo, which had 113 million visitors and Time Warner (including America Online), which had 112 million. But MSN's visitors spent 147 minutes, on average, looking at MSN pages in the month, far less than the 260 minutes that users spent on Yahoo or the 340 minutes they devoted to Time Warner sites.
Yusuf Mehdi, a vice president for MSN, concedes that the company needs to find a way to engage its audience more.
"We want to have the sort of evangelical feedback that people have for the iPod or the TiVo," Mehdi said. "I want people to say, 'I love MSN.'"
MSN hopes one way to achieve that is to customize its service to the interests of each user. For example, it has introduced trial versions of an automated news service that displays headlines for articles based on the topics that users have shown interest in.
Another part of Microsoft's Internet strategy is to combine Web searches with an improved application that lets users find documents and e-mail messages on personal computers. The enhanced search function will be a feature of the next major version of Windows, scheduled for 2006, but Mehdi said that MSN would make a desktop computer search feature available much sooner, probably as part of the free downloadable toolbar that it introduced earlier this year. And last week Microsoft bought Lookout, a tiny software company, to help with its desktop search effort.
But even with this new focus on searches, Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Watch, said that Microsoft will have a tough time catching up with Google. "To shift market share, Google has to get bad and they have to get good," he said. "People will not go to Microsoft, even if Microsoft is better than Google -- if Google is good enough."
Mehdi said that Microsoft was betting that none of today's search engines are quite good enough to hold users and that Microsoft's strengths will give it a significant advantage as the Internet evolves.
"Search is not done until you can give users the answer they want instead of a list of 1,000 Web sites," Mehdi said. "That's a big, tough software problem. And we said, thank goodness we're software guys."
Source: San Mateo County Times
With Ask Jeeves and MSN eliminating paid inclusion listings from their search results this month, Yahoo is the lone holdout among major search engines to let advertisers pay to have their Web pages in its search results.
Unlike paid placement, advertisers paying for inclusion in a search index are not promised placement. Instead, they are promised that their sites will be included in a search index. The practice has advantages for businesses with constantly changing Web pages that are not indexed as frequently by Web search spiders.
Search leader Google has taken a firm stand against the practice, vowing never to accept payment for inclusion. Its IPO filing makes its stance explicit: "Our search results will be objective and we will not accept payment for inclusion or ranking in them."
Google’s stance has gained converts. Ask Jeeves this month banished its last vestige of paid inclusion, Site Submit, which let Web publishers pay to ensure Ask Jeeves’s Teoma spider scanned their sites. The Emeryville, CA, search engine eliminated its Index Express XML paid inclusion service in March that charged each time a listing was clicked.
MSN followed suit this month when it unveiled a new look to its search pages. A longtime user of paid inclusion pioneer LookSmart, MSN removed all paid inclusion from the search engine, including Site Match listings provided through its use of Yahoo’s Web search technology.
Yahoo remains committed to its 6-month-old Site Match paid inclusion program. When it debuted the program, Yahoo executives explained that it would address the problem of search spiders not reaching all the Web’s content.
As a companion to the paid program, Yahoo operates the Content Acquisition Program, which lets noncommercial sites feed their Web pages through for free. Yahoo has signed National Public Radio, the Library of Congress, The New York Public Library and others for the Content Acquisition Program.
"We are still committed to the Content Acquisition Program," Yahoo spokeswoman Stephanie Ichinose said. "We continue to work with content providers to consider ways to evolve and improve the program."
Nate Elliott, a Jupiter Research analyst, said paid inclusion still has a bright future because search engines simply cannot refresh their indexes quickly enough to offer the best possible search results. Jupiter expects paid inclusion spending to reach at least $200 million next year.
When it dropped Site Match from its listings, MSN did not rule out returning to some form of paid inclusion, including through Yahoo, as long as it is clear to users which listings are paid and the index is improved.
"I wouldn’t be surprised to see MSN back in the [paid] inclusion game," Elliott said. "They clearly don’t have any philosophical problem with it."
Fredrick Marckini, CEO of Arlington, MA, search marketing firm iProspect, said most of his clients use Site Match, benefiting from the guarantee that Yahoo will crawl their sites every 48 hours. Since iProspect estimates up to 70 percent of all clicks occur in the algorithmic search results, Site Match has been useful, he said.
"Without Site Match, you’re never assured that more than 50 percent of the Web site will be included in the index," he said.
Critics contend Site Match gives the appearance that Yahoo favors paid inclusion listings over non-paid, since it charges a fee each time a paid inclusion listing gets clicked. Marckini does not think Yahoo gives Site Match listings favorable placement, but a submitted listing is easier for Yahoo’s search algorithm to consider than a crawled Web page, giving a paid inclusion Web page a de facto boost.
Jim Lanzone, vice president of product management at Ask Jeeves, said the search engine found combining structured content of paid inclusion feeds with unstructured content of Web search like mixing "apples and oranges."
"We found that it affected relevance," he said. "Sometimes that would be positive, but that was an accident. More often than not it was negative."
The Federal Trade Commission two years ago issued guidelines for paid inclusion, recommending that search engines "clearly and conspicuously" disclose that some sites paid to have their Web pages included in the index. Yahoo provides that disclosure under an "about this page" link at the top of its search results page.
Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Watch, an industry Web site, has criticized Site Match for not disclosing which listings paid to be included in the index.
"I don’t like the way it’s currently offered on Yahoo," he said. "It goes against how Web search is traditionally supposed to operate."
The greatest concern for Yahoo could be Site Match affecting its standing as a search engine. It ranks behind Google in search share, drawing 30 percent to Google’s 36 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix. MSN ranks third with 16 percent of searches.
"The only way this could really hurt them is if consumers dislike Yahoo because it uses [paid] inclusion," Elliott said. "But consumers don’t know it’s happening."
Source: DM News
Microsoft is developing new technology to allow users finding information stored on hard drives easily, such as e-mails, certain documents and various data files.
On the other hand, Google is reportedly working on similar technology to allow faster and more relevant searches of information stored on personal computers.
"We are collaborating together across groups," Raikes told a group of reporters Thursday, adding that existing search functions within Office programs were already advanced enough to deliver relevant information to users.
Asked if the Office division, which Raikes oversees, was pursuing a specific search strategy, Raikes said that there was no specific effort but that his group was working with Microsoft Research and other divisions to enhance information retrieval in Office.
Office is Microsoft's second-largest division after Windows, offering a system of programs for business tasks. As a result, it generates and retrieves much of the information stored on computer hard drives.
Third-party software providers, such as Lookout Software, have attracted a large following of users by offering an add-on to Outlook, Microsoft's e-mail, contacts and scheduling program, that allows faster and more efficient searches of such information.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft's research arm has also been working on an information-retrieval technology called "Stuff I've Seen" that gives users an instant snapshot of information that they have used on a PC.
Asked if search functions would be integrated with Office, Raikes said that his group was "always working" on improving the functionality of Office and was not working on a specific time frame to compete against Google.
Search experts have identified local hard drive search as the next battleground among search providers.
X1 Technologies is offering a $99 software program called X1 Search that indexes and delivers nearly instant search results of information stored on hard drives, including e-mail and attachments. X1 was conceived by Idealab founder Bill Gross.
Source: ZD Net
MSN today launches a set of new services for its MSN Search service, aimed at helping people get faster and easier access to the information they need.
As part of a $100 million investment in improving the customer experience, MSN is delivering the most significant upgrade to MSN Search in its history, including a new MSN Search home page ( http://search.msn.com/ ) that features easy navigation to popular MSN services; a new, cleaner look for its search results page that separates algorithmic results from paid results links and eliminates paid inclusion.
"With this significant upgrade to MSN Search, we are delighted to now offer what we believe is the best search service available for the 350 million MSN customers. Among the many improvements, we're particularly excited to increase the relevancy of many search query results by up to 45 percent," said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of MSN.
"This massive investment kicks off a wave of innovation from MSN that will move search beyond its current, limited offering to delivering the next-generation search experience."
These improvements are initial steps toward achieving the MSN vision of taking search beyond today's basic Internet search services to deliver direct answers to people's questions from a broad range of information. As part of this vision, MSN will launch a new algorithmic search engine and a range of other search services worldwide within the next year.
Today, MSN reached an important milestone by releasing an initial technology test of its forthcoming algorithmic search engine to gather feedback from webmasters and search enthusiasts.
MSN's new MSN Search home page features fast loading times and quick access to the information that people care about most. The new MSN Search home page is the lightest home page available from the major search providers, delivering lightning-fast results.
The new home page offers people one-click access to their favorite MSN services, such as the world's leading free e-mail service, MSN Hotmail®, and the world's leading free instant messaging service, MSN Messenger.
Other popular information is available through easy access including Weather, News, Sports, Entertainment, Stock Quotes and My MSN personalized home page options. In addition, people can make the new MSN Search home page their default home page for fast searching and easy access to their favorite online services.
MSN also redesigned its search results page to offer a cleaner design, which clearly differentiates algorithmic search results -- those that are delivered purely based on relevancy -- from sponsored links from advertisers.
The number of sponsored links has also been reduced so that MSN displays algorithmic answers prominently on the first page of every query result. MSN has also removed paid inclusion links from algorithmic search results in its new design to help ensure people will clearly understand which results are generated through commercial relationships.
MSN will continue to evaluate the potential of paid inclusion to improve relevancy for consumers. Beginning today, any links paid for by advertisers will be displayed in shaded boxes that clearly identify them with a Sponsored Sites heading, enabling consumers to clearly choose between algorithmic results and sponsored links.
These changes have resulted in dramatically increased usage by customers, because the clearly differentiated sections for algorithmic results and sponsored links give them a clear understanding and choice of results. People using the new design in beta testing spent 42 percent more minutes using the MSN Search service, and queries per user increased by 36 percent.
In addition to providing Internet searching capabilities, MSN will be offering more and more services that help people locate the information they want without having to search through pages of Web links.
With today's improvements, the MSN Search home page offers a drop-down menu next to the search box that provides direct access to a variety of in-depth information sources, including more than 50,000 articles and resources from the No. 1 Encarta Reference Library 2004, featuring the Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004, Encarta World English Dictionary and other industry-leading resources that vary by country such as stock quotes from MSN Money, movie listings from MSN Entertainment and more.
MSN also improves its news Search by offering a vertical news option in its drop-down menu and through its Newsbot technology, which offers personalized news search across more than 4,000 news sources.
Although search is one of the most popular online activities today, people often don't find the information they want. According to Vividence Corp., nearly half of complex online queries never lead to the desired answers. Even when people do find the exact information they're looking for, an internal MSN study found that it takes an average of 11 minutes per search for people to go through the long lists of links offered by today's search services.
MSN is working to solve these challenges by developing innovative, new search technologies that will offer smarter answers to people's questions. These new approaches build on the experience, insights and customer feedback gathered since MSN launched its first online search service in 1998, and on over a decade of experience gathered across Microsoft Research, Windows®, Office and other areas within the company.
Reaching a major milestone in the journey to deliver innovative search solutions, MSN today also released a Technology Preview of its upcoming search engine in 28 markets and 11 languages to gather feedback from webmasters and search enthusiasts on the relevancy of search results delivered by MSN technology.
The Technology Preview is an early test of the raw algorithmic search engine built by MSN, utilizing Microsoft technology, and currently contains more than 1 billion documents in the index.
When launched within the next year, the new search engine will offer unique features that help answer people's questions directly by pulling information from a variety of sources.
Source: Microsoft press release
Microsoft plans to improve its search capabilities from July, as it looks to compete with heavyweights Google and Yahoo, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates said today.
Gates told a media briefing in Sydney the company had "several milestones with its search site" on the way.
"In July, the format of the site will change -- and so will the quality of what you get -- and the way it'll look is dramatically improved," Gates said.
"It'll be later this year that we actually roll out what's entirely our own back end driving the search".
Gates said the way search was currently done was "very low-tech," based around taking "a bunch of words and making an index.
"You're not actually understanding the documents and so some of the false hits you get are almost humourous," he told journalists. "A human would not make those mistakes because a human can understand the document".
Gates said Microsoft had been doing linguistic research for more than a decade "that actually lets us parse and understand documents.
"That's where you can bring in the idea, don't show this person a restaurant if it's not nearby [or] don't show this person something about … potato chips if they mean computer chips.
Gates said search moving forward encompassed personalisation, understanding local information, being able to parse in to the semantics of a document, being able to browse databases and being able to attach domain knowledge.
"Say if I want to know if a flight is on time. "Generic Web search today is actually terrible for that, but we should be able to look at your query and say hey, that's a flight number and give a response that's basically just a direct answer to the question, not a list of random Web sites".
He described Google and Microsoft as being "fairly unique" in the way they both hired a lot of computer science Phds. "So the rate of improvement between us and them will be highly beneficial to the consumer as we compete".
Source: ZD Net
Microsoft has unveiled a research project at its Silicon Valley campus which uses statistical analysis to locate spam web pages.
Microsoft will be incorporating this new filtering technology into its forthcoming MSN Search portal, aiming to offer results free of web spam.
A spam web page is designed solely to fool search engines by linking keywords to web pages that the spammer wants to show up high in the search results.
Spammers are increasingly trying to weasel their way into search engine results, and Microsoft hopes that filtering them out can be one area where its tool can outshine Google's.
"This will be part of the [upcoming] Microsoft search," researcher Marc Najork told vnunet.com.
Microsoft has so far given little detail about its MSN Search project, which is designed to compete head on with Google. The new search technology is scheduled to be available this year.
In a sample of one billion web pages, Microsoft claims that eight per cent are spam.
In one case, the Microsoft researchers claim to have found a webpage in Germany that would constantly create pages filled with pieces of text that were copied from random web pages, linked to a porn site.
This not only leads visitors away from the webpage from which the text was copied, but gives the spammer an indefinite source of keywords and key phrases to link to.
The researchers found the site after their analysis identified that German web pages on average were updated more often than those in other geographies.
Source: Personal Computer World
While Google provides the highest percentage of all search engine traffic going to shopping sites, MSN Search drives the highest proportion of its own search engine traffic to shopping sites, Hitwise says in its recently released Search Engine Report.
Google sent 4.73% of all search engine traffic to shopping sites in April, compared to 2.73% from Yahoo Search and 0.66% from MSN Search, Hitwise says.
Hitwise includes in its shopping site category “classified” sites such as DineOutFreeToday.com and YourGiftCards.com.
The rest of the top 10 search engines in terms of their share of all traffic going to shopping sites in April:
Ask Jeeves, 0.22%
My Web Search, 0.16%
iWon, 0.15%
Dogpile, 0.12%
Google Image Search, 0.09%
Excite, 0.06%
Alta Vista, 0.05%
MSN gets bragging rights, however, to having the highest proportion of its own search traffic that goes to shopping sites.
Of all the searches that took place at MSN, 10.07%, of users went to shopping sites, edging out Google, at 9.26%, and Yahoo Search, at 8.85%, Hitwise says.
Source: Internet Retailer
Microsoft's new search system will give consumers a new method for searching across any data type, said Yusuf Mehdi, head of Microsoft's MSN division. His remarks were broadcast online.
The technology is designed as a major search improvement for users trying to grapple with an increasing amount of digital information, offering a single hunting system instead of several different search engines, file management systems or other tools.
Microsoft's Windows operating system, which is on 90 percent of personal computers, provides tools for file management on PCs. But Mehdi conceded it doesn't have a quick system for searching.
"I think it's fair to say that we will tackle all of the things that you expect, including PC search, as part of the MSN effort," Mehdi said.
Microsoft plans to release an early version of the technology soon, as part of the software giant's push to compete with Internet search leader Google Inc. A final version is expected in the next 12 months, he said.
He added that the new technology would be available long before the next version of Windows, which isn't expected until 2006. Microsoft has previously said that improving PC search will be a key component of that system, code-named Longhorn.
Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research, said the end-to-end search technology illustrates how concerned Microsoft is with besting rivals including Google, the current Internet search favorite. He expects Google to also release technology soon for searching the desktop.
The concern is that Google and others will increasingly encroach on Microsoft's control over desktop computing.
"Microsoft is scrambling to protect its turf," Wilcox said, noting that rival Apple Computer Inc. also has a more advanced system for searching both the Internet and Apple computers.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has previously conceded that one of the Redmond, Wash., company's big missteps was that it didn't initially invest in building its own Internet search technology, relying instead on a vendor to provide MSN's search results.
But as Google, Yahoo! and other Internet search options have exploded in popularity, Microsoft has turned massive resources toward its own search technology. The effort extends across many of Microsoft's business units, but the most high-profile moves are in its MSN division.
Mehdi told the analysts that personalization is going to be an important part of Microsoft's search efforts.
The company hopes to soon have on its MSN Web site a system similar to Amazon.com's technology that will recognize a user even if that person hasn't expressly signed on to the Web site, he said. It also is working on a system that will track a user's movements over the Internet and use that data to build a more personalized Web page based on the person's surfing habits.
Mehdi conceded that such efforts create thorny privacy issues.
"We're going to make a very big investment in personalization, but it's very clear that privacy and consumer trust is really a key thing in getting your arms around personalization," he said.
Mehdi added that "some companies have just not done it right," and lost costumers as a result. In an apparent jab at Google, he said Microsoft sees a big opportunity inserting advertising into e-mails, but thinks any such effort has to be done right.
Privacy advocates have criticized Google's Gmail e-mail service because of plans to scan e-mails for keywords and insert ads based on what the user appears to be writing about.
Analysts also have noted that Microsoft has had its own troubles building consumer trust. Some say that could be a barrier to Microsoft's success in winning users over to its personalized search technology.
Source: WJLA.com and ABC 7 News
Microsoft said Longhorn will include three major advances: a new file system known as WinFS, a new graphics engine dubbed Avalon and a Web Services architecture known as Indigo.
The company said on Friday that it is aiming to release Longhorn in the first half of 2006--a move that will require the company to scale back some of its more ambitious plans for the next version of Windows.
"There may be specific features within those subsystems that will be scaled back," lead product manager Greg Sullivan said. Sullivan would not identify which features have been trimmed but said such efforts are typical of all new releases of the Windows operating system.
"It's a matter of scaling back by degrees," Sullivan said. "In some cases, the scenarios won't be as all-encompassing."
Microsoft has been reluctant to pin down a date for the launch of the Windows update, though Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said recently that 2006 was a likely target. Even now, there is no public target for Longhorn's release, Sullivan said, but acknowledged the company's internal goal of shipping it by the middle of 2006.
Microsoft plans to cut features from Longhorn and roll them into a future release of Windows, code-named Blackcomb, Jim Allchin, vice president of Microsoft's platform group, told CNET News.com last month. Details on the changes to Longhorn were first reported earlier Friday by BusinessWeek.
Work on Longhorn slowed after Microsoft shifted programmers from that effort to the task of adding security features into Windows XP Service Pack 2, or SP2, an update due to be released shortly.
In an interview with CNET News.com last month, CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft had made a decision to prioritize SP2 at Longhorn's expense. Ballmer said all the major components would still be part of the OS but that the company was planning to "carve a couple of features around the edges."
Microsoft also said Friday that the next version of Office, due to arrive at about the same time as Longhorn, will run on prior versions of Windows. The company has talked about an Office version designed to specifically take advantage of Longhorn's new features.
"Microsoft knows that customers have different roll-out needs," a representative said. "We'll be working to ensure they can use next version of Office with other recent versions of Windows as well (as Longhorn)."
The company representative declined to discuss specific changes to features planned for the next version of Office, saying "it's very early in the development process to speculate on specifics."
Microsoft has also decided not to move ahead with a full interim release of Windows before Longhorn.
"Any smart company is going to have contingency plans," Sullivan said. "That's what we were doing. Longhorn is the next release of Windows."
However, a more modest update to Windows XP still under consideration could include a new Media Player, among other new features. Sullivan said no final decisions have been made on that.
Allchin said the software giant also plans a marketing effort to tout technological advances that are only possible when running Windows XP, such as the ability to connect to the portable Media Center devices that are set to debut later this year.
As for where the cuts to Longhorn may come, some may be in the extent to which the WinFS file system is implemented. Sullivan said work is focused on making sure that WinFS is accessible from within desktop PCs running Longhorn.
"We're still scoping out exactly what are the specific features and scenarios that will be delivered," Sullivan said. "The essence of the WinFS file system will be delivered."
Microsoft executives said last month that the first widespread test, or beta, version of the software, would likely not arrive until the first half of next year. The company had originally promised that a beta would arrive this summer.
Microsoft gave out very early code to developers at last October's professional developer conference in Los Angeles. Sullivan said the company will release an updated preview version of Longhorn at WinHec, the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, scheduled for early May in Seattle. The company will also offer hardware makers more details on the types of machines that will be needed in order to run Longhorn, he added.
"We are going to provide some broad guidance to hardware manufacturers about the kind of systems that will be great Longhorn systems," Sullivan said.
Source: C-Net News
Microsoft said MSN Blogbot will debut in the first half of the year, along with MSN Newsbot, a search site devoted to news.
Microsoft became the first big Internet company Friday to say that it would create a special search Web site just for Weblogs.
The service will not index all blogs, just the ones that MSN determines provide the most useful information, a company official said.
"We will look at credibility and popularity to get people the information they're looking for,'' said Karen Redetzki, a product manager for MSN. ``There are some blogs that may not be relevant to people. Those blogs we may never index."
Redetzki said Blogbot would look similar to the company's Newsbot service, which will automatically index news stories from around the world. A test version of Newsbot is at http://uk.newsbot.msn.com/.
Several Web sites are already dedicated to searching blogs, including www.daypop.com, www.blogdex.net, www.popdex.com and www.technorati.com. Google indexes and provides search results for blogs, as does Yahoo. But neither company separates blog listings from their regular search results.
The actual number of blogs is not known. Estimates range from several hundred thousand to 2 million. At last count, Technorati was tracking 1,973,555 blogs, though it is not clear how many of those are being regularly updated.
Source: Mercury News
Analysts and observers have long predicted that Microsoft could rule the Web search world -- now dominated by Google and Yahoo -- with a tool that is a ubiquitous part of its market-leading operating system.
The European Commission's decision to force Microsoft to ``unbundle'' its media player from Windows raises questions about the software maker's plans to integrate search technology into its next operating system.
But Wednesday's ruling clouds that picture, raising the specter of antitrust complaints about the company's efforts to integrate such a tool into Windows.
``The big question is how precedent-setting'' the decision is, said Joe Wilcox, senior analyst at Jupiter Research. ``We've got a precedent that says . . . bundling is not acceptable in some circumstances. If it could apply to media player, it could be applied to other technologies.''
Microsoft's MSN Search holds third place in market share, behind Yahoo and Google. But the company now has at least three research projects devoted to search technology.
One program, called ``Stuff I've Seen,'' employs a search box in the task bar that helps people quickly track down anything they've ever viewed, including e-mail messages, address book contacts, office documents and Web pages.
In a report last month, Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said such a tool could allow Microsoft to strike ``a winning blow'' in the search wars.
But search expert Danny Sullivan said Microsoft's new approach appears to switch the Web search function out of the browser and into the operating system, a change many users may balk at.
Sullivan, editor of the Web site Search Engine Watch, noted that Microsoft already tries to drive people to its MSN Search page through its operating system, Web browser and office applications, with limited success.
``Despite all these advantages, these other players have thrived,'' Sullivan said. ``That would be an interesting argument to make in court, that Microsoft will wipe out these two competitors who have been kicking it around. There are three very strong players, and Microsoft is the weakest of the three.''
Sullivan said a threat might exist if Microsoft created a new stand-alone search program and bundled it with its next operating system, code-named Longhorn.
``That would pose a bigger challenge because Yahoo and Google would need to develop applications then, and that would require a download for the user,'' he said. ``But if we're talking search as we're doing search today, I don't see a problem.''
Source: Mercury News
