If you can't convince people to use your applications or web services over your competitor's, what's the best way to gain market share? Bundle your products and services with the operating system so that people won't have to go out of their way to use them.
Microsoft has obviously known this for a long time, and got into a spot of trouble in the EU a few years back for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows XP (among other things). So it should come as no surprise that Microsoft and HP announced a deal today that will make Microsoft's Live Search the default search engine on all computers the company ships starting in January.
HP will also install the Live Search Toolbar for Internet Explorer which also provides links to HP services including Snapfish. There's no word on how much Microsoft paid for the deal. Odds are folks who really truly prefer alternate search engines like Google or Yahoo! will change their default search engine at their earliest convenience. But we're willing to bet that an awful lot of people still just use whatever comes with their computer.
Just over a month after paying $115 million for travel planning site Farecast, Microsoft has relaunched the site. And after spending countless hours integrating the site into Microsoft's Live Search suite of web applications, the result is... basically identical to the old site. The biggest difference we can find is the Live Search label appended to the Farecast logo.
Microsoft has folded Farecast user accounts into the Windows Live suite, which means you can login using your Windows Live ID.
You won't find Farecast results from the main Live Search page. You'll have to click the More tab, and then select "See All" to find Farecast. But eventually we wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft started bringing up Farecast results for regular travel-related search terms. That clearly hasn't happened yet. When we entered the search query: "New York to Philadelphia flight" the top search result was a link to TripAdvisor.
It's hard being Microsoft. Oh, not when you're talking about desktop software. The company pretty much owns the desktop operating system. But on the web, Google is pretty much king. And no matter how hard Microsoft has tried, the company has been unable ot make a dent in Google's dominance of the search engine market. So Microsoft is tryng something new: Bribing people to use its Live Search.
Here's how it works. If you use Live Search Cashback page to search for products, When you buy qualifiying items, Microsoft will throw a little bit of money into a cashback account for you. When your balance reaches $5 or more, they'll send you the money. Microsoft has reportedly partnered with retailers including Barnes & Noble, Sears, Home Depot, and J&R Electronics to offer cash back deals of between 2 and 30 percent.
Of course, you don't make any money if you don't spend some. And while Microsoft might be able to convince a few folks to use their product search engine, it remains unclear whether the move will convince people to use Live Search for their everyday search needs.
Microsoft has updates its Live Search for Windows Mobile software, adding four new features:
4 day weather forecasts
Search the web from the Live Search software without opening a web browser first
View maps and locations shared by other Virtual Earth users
Take addresses from your contact list and see where your friends are on a map
You can download the Live Search software by visiting m.live.com on your mobile device. If you don't want to download anything, you can still use the web-based Windows Live search engine, but the Live Search application is pretty slick and much faster than the web interface at loading maps and satellite imagery.
Microsoft has rolled out a new improved news search engine under its Live Search banner. Overall Live Search News looks a lot like you'd expect a news search engine to look if you've used another one like say, Google News. But there are a few features that make Live Search News stand out:
An orange banner will pop up and highlight breaking news at the top of the site, but only when there's actual breaking news, which is kind of refreshing in today's 24/7 news environment when many news agencies are pretending there's always something breaking.
See that blue sidebar on the right? Yeah, we thought it was for advertising at first too, but it's actually local news selected for you based on your IP address. No need to sign up and change your settings to get local news tailored to you.
Once you enter a search term, you can further refine your search from a list of categories, or select from a list of related searches.
Videos are featured right on the main page, and if you mouse over them you can preview the videos before deciding whether to click to watch the full video.
Overall, we're pretty impressed with the new Live Search News. Our only real complaint is that there doesn't appear to be a way to subscribe to RSS feeds for searches.
The other day Goog 411 graduated from Google Labs. So while Gmail is still in beta, the much younger service that lets you get phone numbers and directions on your phone is 100% officially launched. So what does Microsoft do? They announce Live Search 411.
Right now if you dial 1-800-CALL-411 you get a "coming soon" message. But if history teaches us anything, when Live Search 411 launches it will work almost exactly the same way as Goog 411.
Microsoft is also announcing/confirming a small boatload (perhaps a kayak or a canoe) of new features for the desktop versions of Live Search:
Improved driving directions with dynamic rerouting based on traffic, and landmark clues to let you know if you've gone too far
User generated content is incorporated into Live Search local results
Virtual Earth updates including multipoint trip routing, enhanced geocoding, and map control support for Safari 2.0
An updated version of Live Search for Windows Mobile 5.0/6 will be available today with support for voice input and GPS
Live Search for Blackberry beta
Honestly, at this point we have no idea whether we prefer Microsoft or Google's mapping service. Maybe we'll just start using Mapquest again. No, we probably won't.
Microsoft is rolling out a few changes to its Live Search Maps services in the coming weeks. It looks like the new page will offer a bunch of new features making it easier to find and print driving directions. Here are a few of the highlights:
A new display mode will let you compress the first few or last few directions. If you're tired of wasting paper by printing out the 5 step directions for getting out of your driveway, this feature could make your day (and prolong your printer's days).
The two-box search bar at the top of the page will be transformed into a single search box with multiple tabs.
There's a new option to select the best route to avoid current traffic.
A new 1-click directions feature will let you search for a location and then get directions to that location from the North, South, East, or West.
It's interesting to note that while Google Maps lets you know how long your trip might take in traffic, and lets you reroute your trip any way you'd like, Live Search Maps might be one-upping Google by giving you something more useful: directions that will actually help you avoid traffic. In theory, anyway. We'll see how well this feature works once Microsoft launches the new Live Search Maps.
Microsoft has launched an updated version of Live Search. Some of the changes will be visible in the user interface, but the company also made a bunch of changes under the hood to make the search engine more useful and reliable.
Increased the site index by more than 400%
Improved understanding of query intent
Auto-spell correction
Faster page-loads
Uses more click-stream data to improve page ranking and relevancy
Improved answers to questions about specific items like weather, images, celebrities, entertainment, maps, or sports
The interface is also a bit cleaner. The search box has moved to the left. The tabs for searching images, video, news have been replaced with text links (which are a bit harder to notice than tabs at first). And the fonts look a little less 1985-ish.
Apparently 40 percent of the searches on Live.com involve entertainment, shopping, health, and local search, so Microsoft has focused heavily on these four areas.
Microsoft is headed towards the rollout of a new Live.com search today, including a brand spankin' new interface.
There will be a gathering in Mountain View at the Microsoft campus for industry insiders to get a glimpse at Microsoft's latest search interface and redesign today. The new redesign will see a refreshing look for the search interface taking cues from both Ask and Google Universal Search. MSN Shopping will also get tied into the search results for consumer product results, making for an all around better user experience.
Akram Hussein, a Windows Live Platform Program Manager caught a glimpse of the new look while on his home PC, and managed to snap a few shots of the cleaned up design. He has since pulled down the post with images from his website but we did manage to get copies and have compared them with the current Live.com search results. We will have to wait and see what else is truly unveiled as all information from the meeting will be under an embargo for later this evening.
In more MSN news, there is also talk of MSN Video adding instant start and less intrusive ads in video content.
UPDATE: Microsoft's press release on the new updated Live Search Engine.
Gallery: Microsoft gets set to launch new Live.com Search interface
