Tuesday, February 01, 2005

The Seattle Times: Microsoft: Microsoft launching search tool in ad blitz

The Seattle Times: Microsoft: Microsoft launching search tool in ad blitz: "Microsoft executives have repeatedly admitted to missteps in search. Just last week, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, company Chairman Bill Gates summed up Microsoft's past approach bluntly.
'We were stupid as hell,' he said, according to a report from Dow Jones Newswires. MSN debuted a test version of its search engine in November but was still using technology from Yahoo! to run its main search engine.
MSN will drop that technology as it moves its own search engine into use in markets around the world. It will continue to use a separate technology from Yahoo! that serves up some of the text-based advertisements on its search-results page.
MSN is trying to be more competitive in the search business by using one tool its rivals don't have: Encarta encyclopedia. In the past, it had made a limited amount of Encarta content available free as part of its search results. The rest was available only to paying subscribers.
Now, MSN has opened up its entire Encarta library free."

Also exploiting MSN Music for related searches. See this summary for more feature highlights.

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