Microsoft to preview search engine
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MICROSOFT has stepped up its efforts to compete with rival Google, offering consumers a preview of its technology for searching the internet this week.
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After months of speculation and two &quot;preview&quot; releases, Microsoft unwraps its new MSN search engine, the first major competitor to join Web search major leagues in nearly a year.
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MSN's Search Engine Preview is Back  At the end of July I reviewed MSN's first tech preview for their new search engine. I wasn't impressed. (Man, I'm getting crabby. Hey you kids, get off my lawn! Where's my Geritol?!) Now there's another preview available at http://techpreview.search.msn.com/ and the relevancy is much ...
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On Thursday, Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) MSN division launched a beta version of a search engine that appears designed to compete directly with Web search leader Google.
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Microsoft released its latest search engine, Windows Live Search, which is said to enhance sifting through search results by utilizing categories such as digital images, news, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, and blogs.
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SEATTLE Microsoft launches Web search technology today that it hopes will give it a share of the market dominated by Google. The new search engine will initially be available only on a special test site.
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Microsoft yesterday res-ponded to rivals in the burgeoning search engine business by unveiling a test version of a free desktop search tool that will help computer users find information on the hard drives of their PCs.
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After months of speculation and two 'preview' releases, Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its new MSN search engine, the first major competitor to join the big leagues of web search in nearly a year.
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A beta version of the search engine Microsoft Corp. is developing went live Thursday, offering users an interface and a set of features that make the product begin to resemble established search engines from competitors Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Ask Jeeves Inc. and America Online Inc. (AOL).
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Today, the Redmond company is unveiling the first widespread preview of its new MSN Search technology, a key part of its effort to regain ground in a critical area where Microsoft concedes that it has fallen behind.
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InfoWorld - Google has released a new version of its desktop search tool, adding a preview feature to help find information more quickly and making some improvements to the interface design.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft thinks its Live Search can match GoogleÂ in some areas now, but the company has been theÂ underdog in searchÂ for so long it's not even trying to lure users away from its rival -- at least not yet. Showing off a dizzying array of tools to reporters and analysts at its Silicon Valley campus in Google's hometown of Mountain View, Calif., Microsoft executives said several times that the company is focused on providing a better search experience for current users of Live Search, hoping toÂ get them to search there more often. The Redmond, Wash., company also wants to lure users of its MSN portal to more frequently use Live Search. They compared Live Search's results to those of Google in some cases and said customer research showed its user satisfaction catching up to Google, but didn't talk about grabbing market share. The numbers are damning: About 37 percent of Web searchers sometimes use Live Search, but only about 11 percent of all searches are done on the site, Microsoft said, citing independent statistics. The average user of Live Search does 15 searches on the site per month, while the comparable number for Google is 55. Microsoft runs behind YahooÂ and Google, and Derrick Connell, a general manager in product management at Microsoft, acknowledged that the search product was actually losing market share in the first four months of this year. But the company hopes to gain ground at least among its current base with the new capabilities. Over the past three years, Microsoft has quietly invested in basic things such as coverage, expanding its index to more than 20 billion Web documents, executives said. But it's more flashy additions in video, health, local search and maps that may help Live Search make an impression. The new video search interface, one of the features to be rolled out gradually to all visitors over the next week, lets users play a preview of each video on a results page just by putting the cursor over the image representing it. Using internally developed technology as it "crawls" a video Web site, Microsoft detects moments in a video that are likely to be highlights, said Mike Nichols, a group program manager in Live Search. Those parts are combined in a 30-second preview that searchers can watch to get an idea of what a longer video is like. Audio peaks, flashes of light and scene changes are among the elements Microsoft's automated system looks for. The previews are cached on Microsoft's own servers for quick playing, he said. Microsoft's new specialized health search engine, to be rolled out the following week, will divide results into separate columns for journal articles, Web results and sponsored results. To address consumer worries about privacy, all searches and results on the health site will be encrypted using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). In local search, Microsoft is using its Virtual Earth tool for richer results. It can project aerial photographs of places on Virtual Earth's navigable three-dimensional maps of major cities, said General Manager Erik Jorgensen. A tool for users to show highlights of a trip, called Collections, will be enhanced so viewers can just click through the trips or passively watch them in a virtual video rather than looking around a map. The maker of a Collection will also be able to upload the virtual video to sites such as YouTube, he said. Local directions will also be enhanced. Rather than make users enter a starting point, Live Search will offer directions from all the major highways, from which users can choose. As an option, the local search engine will also be able to modify those directions in light of current traffic conditions. Local and mapping features will be rolled out by mid-October, according to the company. Microsoft has done a poor job selling its search offerings, and if it has matched Google on factors such as relevance, few people would believe that right now, said Gartner Inc. analyst Van Baker. The new video, health and local search features are impressive and Microsoft is doing the right thing by targeting current Live Search users and MSN portal visitors, he said. "They've got to make sure that [group] is happy first," Baker said. After that, it may be able to convince others that Live Search is worth a try.
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MSN Closes Search Engine Technology Preview  Microsoft's MSN has closed down the preview/beta page of MSN Search Engine Technology ResearchBuzz reports.   Trying to access it now gets you this page which includes the text "Once we are ready, we will release another preview of our new algorithmic search engine." I'm glad ...
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Microsoft on Friday released a new preview of the presentation subsystem of its upcoming Longhorn version of Windows. The Redmond, Wash.
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Microsoft Corp.âs proprietary new search engine is scheduled to go live today in a beta version, at beta.search.msn.com. Like its rival, Google.
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It looks to be all out war. Microsoft has announced the launch date for a test version of desktop search software to rival Google&#39;s beta search application released earlier this month.
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The US software giant Microsoft said it would launch its Internet search service on Thursday amid the fierce competition with rival Google.