Windows Live Search Head to Leave Microsoft
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The Windows Live brain drain continues as news sources are reporting that Windows Live Search vice president Christopher Payne will be stepping down shortly. Microsoft is so far declining to comment on the reports.
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By ALLISON LINN Associated Press  Video:    Apple's Mystery:  Movie Downloads Tuesday?     Live Search will try to make headway against Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc.   SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp.
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The search provider has decided to end its music service, opting instead to send its business to Real.
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InfoWorld - The executive in charge of leading Microsoft&#39;s battle against search giant Google is leaving the company to form his own venture, according to published reports.
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Hotmail lives, at least in terms of what Microsoft will call its Web-based e-mail service. The company had planned to change the service's name to Windows Live Mail but changed its mind this week.
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Microsoft's Live search engine enjoyed a recent jump in queries, although Google still reigns.
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Microsoft has made a number of changes to its Windows Live offerings, including pushing some services out of beta and adding new features to others.
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fihzy writes &quot;eBay have announced they will retire Microsoft Passport Sign-In and .NET alerts. The Microsoft Passport Directory of Sites has been discontinued, too.
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Trying to catch up with Google, Microsoft says it will change the way computer users search.
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The head of Microsoft's Business Division is leaving the company, to be replaced by former Juniper Networks COO Stephen Elop in September.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is joining Ask.com in offering Web surfers a way to use its search engines anonymously, and the two companies are now calling on the search and online advertising industry to develop a common set of privacy practices. By year's end, Microsoft will give users a way to search anonymously on its Microsoft Windows Live Web sites, and it will also implement a new data retention policy that after 18 months will scrub all search query data of any information that could be used to identify the searcher. "We think that we as an industry ought to take a look at ways to further enhance privacy protections," said Microsoft Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen. "We're really trying to make sure that people always have the ability to have a trusted experience." These steps areÂ similar to those taken by Ask.comÂ last week and are part of an effort to create industry consensus on privacy practices, Cullen said. When visitors use Microsoft's Windows Live search engine, Microsoft stores the search queries along with some information on the person doing the searching in order to provide them with targeted advertising. Like all the major search providers, Microsoft doesn't associate names or e-mail addresses with this data, but it does keep IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and some other identifying information, such as the zip codes of Windows Live users. Privacy advocates are concerned that this data could be misused. "Search terms are often about drugs, they're about sex and they're about rock and roll," said Peter Swire, a law professor with Ohio State University who was the White House's Chief Counselor for Privacy under the Clinton administration. "There are a lot of people who are feeling that they're doing a private exploration and wouldn't want their search terms as part of their permanent record." Last year, AOLÂ researchers inadvertently illustrated how this data could be misused when theyÂ posted data on about 650,000 searchesÂ made on the company's Web site. New York Times reporters were able to track down one of the searchers based on the information in the database. Ask.com and Microsoft's announcements put pressure on Google to improve its privacy practices, Swire said. Google retains part of the IP address associated with searches and has not promised to provide anonymous searching, he explained. It is becoming even more important for companies to safeguard consumers' privacy as the online advertising and search industries consolidate, Swire said. Both Microsoft and Google have made major moves in this space over the past few months with their plannedÂ acquisitions of aQuantiveÂ andÂ DoubleClick. More pressure is coming from the European Union, which has placed limits on the amount of time search companies can retain this type of data and isÂ reviewing Google's DoubleClick acquisition. Microsoft and Ask.com will invite privacy advocates and Internet search and advertising companies such as Google, AOL, and Yahoo to come together and more clearly explain how the industry will handle privacy. "The first step is, we'll be in contact with all the other players in this space and talk about what a summit might look like," said Cullen. "We're very happy to host it, if that's the answer ... both Microsoft and Ask.com think that this is the time to make this happen." The two companies expect to report on the results of this outreach by September. That's right around the time that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected to host a workshop discussing these same issues, Swire said. "Now we're getting public debate and corporate debate on best practices. And the FTC will be trying to push that this fall." Â
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Web search leader Google Inc.  on Thursday said the head of its Web log service, Blogger, will leave at the end of the week to pursue other interests.
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George Reyes will be one of only a few of the Internet search giantâs top executives to have left since its founding in 1998.
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Building on the Custom Search Engine it introduced last October, Google on Tuesday took the wraps off a new hosted search site designed for businesses, which offers greater flexibility for a small, yearly fee. The service targets small to medium-sized businesses and will surely ruffle the feathers at Microsoft.
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The head of MicrosoftÂs division that makes specialized software for small and midsize businesses is stepping down.
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Looks like Microsoft may have been biding its time to get back at search giant Google. [Missing Links]
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. is removing the beta, or test, tag from Live Search, its next-generation search engine, and making it the underlying search tool at its MSN.com portal. The move comes as Microsoft anxious attempts to gain traction in the search engine market, where it remains a distant third behind leader Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Because search engine-based advertising is a fast-growing, multibillion-dollar business, Microsoft has invested heavily in improving its search tools and accompanying ad network. But it has failed to make a dent in Google's dominance. In June, Google nabbed 45 percent of all search engine queries in the U.S., while Yahoo got 29 percent and Microsoft 13 percent, according to comScore Networks Inc. This represents a market share reduction for Microsoft of almost 3 percentage points from June 2005. From Tuesday to Thursday, Microsoft will replace the current MSN Search engine on MSN.com with Live Search, which features a revamped image search service, an improved local search, a redesigned user interface and new tools to refine query results, said Derrick Connell, general manager of the Microsoft search business unit. The change will take place progressively on different MSN host servers. When users run a search on MSN.com, they will be taken to a Live Search results page on the Live.com domain, but there will be links there to guide users back to the MSN.com portal, he said. Live Search went intoÂ public beta testing in March at Live.com, the home page of the Live-branded initiative Microsoft launched last year to boost its software-as-a-service offerings. Live.com is also exiting its beta status this week. Among the enhancements in Live Search are new options to view full-size photos in image search results and an increased number of "bird's eye" aerial images in local search, which is shedding its beta label in its U.S. and the U.K. services. Live Search also features a new social search service called QnA, in which users can pose questions and have others chime in with answers. Yahoo, Google and others have similar question-and-answer search services. Â