Microsoft Expanding Live Search into China
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Microsoft Expanding Live Search into China Under a deal with China Telecom, Microsoft will be serving a Chinese version of Live Search to China Telecom&#8217;s 25 million broadband customers.  The People&#8217;s Daily Online reports: Microsoft has been looking for an opportunity to get into the search market since Baidu.com, Yahoo! and Google joined. The launch of Live [...]
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft wants to play a bigger role in China's living rooms, and the company is willing to spend millions of dollars to get there. The company's latest home-entertainment moves in China include aÂ planned $12.3 million investmentÂ in Sichuan Changhong Electric. The deal, announced earlier this week, gives Microsoft a small stake in one of China's largest TV makers, which in turn agreed to develop TVs and other products able to link with the Internet. "Microsoft and Changhong have partnered in exploring the use of digital media technologies to benefit the consumers for a better in-home networked digital entertainment experience," Microsoft said Friday in an e-mail statement. Its investment is intended to build goodwill, rather than bring a specific product to market. "The investment is more like a gesture of saying, 'We're friends strategically,'" said Jason Yin, managing director at In-Stat China. Critics have compared the Changhong deal to Venus, an ill-fated project launched in 1999 to develop Windows CE set-top boxes for the Chinese market. But that's not an accurate comparison. "It's very different," Yin said. Unlike Venus, Microsoft isn't trying to bring a new piece of hardware to market. Current versions of Windows are capable of connecting a TV with the Internet, and these types of systems are already available in China. Changhong's own M10 Living Room Entertainment Center is an example. Based on Windows XP Media Center Edition, the M10 is designed to connect with a television and comes with a remote control and wireless keyboard, allowing users to access music, videos and the Internet from a couch instead of a desk. Changhong also offers other consumer products that connect to the Internet. For instance, it sells a 32-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) television with a camera that can be used for Internet video calls. And the company has worked with China Telecommunications Group Corp., one of the country's two major fixed-line operators, to sell IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) set-top boxes. Microsoft hopes closer ties with Changhong will strengthen the channel through which its home-entertainment software reaches Chinese consumers. Those products include Windows Media Center and Mediaroom, the company's IPTV software. "Microsoft now has a better understanding of the value of local partners in penetrating China's market," Yin said, citing the example of Xiamen Amoi Electronics, which develops and sells Windows Mobile smart phones in China. Whether Microsoft's small investment in Changhong yields the desired result remains to be seen. In past years, the company used investments to build closer relationships with Chinese partners to varying degrees of success. "The investment doesn't always mean they get what they want," Yin said. The Changhong investment is just one part of Microsoft's home-entertainment push in China, and the company continues to seek out new deals and alliances. On Thursday, Microsoft signed an agreement with Shanghai Media Group (SMG), the country's second-largest media company. Under the terms of that deal, SMG will use Microsoft products across its new-media division, which includes Internet video, IPTV and mobile television. The partners hope their combined strengths in software and content will convince more companies to join them. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Â
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The Mountain View, Calif. search company is debuting new functionality that will allow users to drill down to localized news.
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O plans to   officially launch on Tuesday its new Windows Live Search   engine, a pillar in its strategy to topple market leader Google   GOOG.O and wrestle away billions of dollars worth of online   advertising.
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Microsoft Corp. is expanding its local, photo-based search service into the United Kingdom, and adding traffic information for the U.S. service.
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Last week in China, A Lot of Baidu and a bit of Microsoft and Google There hardly goes a week by that Baidu is not in the news. They are actively getting into new partnerships, boasting about their Market Share and releasing new services. Google has yet to find a way to counter this. The rest [...]
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Microsoft&#39;s new search engine includes a &quot;near me&quot; button that helps users find sites for a given location and a feature that answers questions such as &quot;What is the capital of Turkey?
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China's Mobile Search Leader Makes Its Services Available for Free to IM                     Users on Handheld Devices and PCs    SHANGHAI, China, Sept. 18 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- mInfo(R) Inc.
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Microsoft will offer improved capacity to search copyrighted books on the Internet.
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Competing with a similar offering from Google but taking an approach one analyst describes as "sound, prudent and correct," Microsoft on Wednesday launched a beta version of Live Search Books.
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Microsoft Corp. plans to officially  launch on Tuesday its new Windows Live Search engine, a pillar  in its strategy to topple market leader Google and wrestle away  billions of dollars worth of online advertising.
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Microsoft will launch its long-awaited Internet search service that is expected to compete with market leaders Google and Yahoo.
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Microsoft on Thursday began phasing in a slick new version of its Live Search service in a bid to gain ground on leading Internet search rivals Google and Yahoo.
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SINGAPORE: Microsoft Corp is expanding its community and economic development programmes in Asia as part of its global campaign to give poor people access to computers, the US software giant&#39;s chief executive said last Thursday.
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Search giant tries to make more headway in China, where it faces a local rival.
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'And better than Yahoo!' Microsoft yesterday used its Silicon Valley outpost, just down the road from Google, to unveil a "major update" to the web's third most popular search engine. And, yes, it's only been a year since the last major update. Bill and the gang plan on re-launching Live Search every 12 months.â¦
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One of the features Microsoft believes will help its new Windows Live Search take off is called "QnA." In a sense, it's Microsoft's attempt to try to evolve the search engine into more of a social service like About.com. We talked with Live.com product manager Justin Osmer to get a better read of where Microsoft is headed.