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Microsoft's MSN unveils new search projects
Friday, July 30, 2004
How easy is it to build a formidable search product? If you're
Microsoft, it can take less than a year to show promising results.
MSN's search is now crawling, indexing and ranking from more than
1 billion documents with a small team in just 11 months, said Yusuf
Mehdi, vice president of Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN Internet unit, during
his presentation late Thursday at Microsoft's analyst day.
Mehdi's update on Microsoft's search plans was light on financial
details, but big on ideas. "This coming year will be the best
years of innovation," he said.
Mehdi's confidence was enough to convince anyone to think twice
about whether Microsoft is a threat to Google (GOOG), which is expected
to raise $3.3 billion in an IPO scheduled for early August.
The business is too large for Microsoft to ignore.
"Search and communications are big opportunities for us,"
he said. MSN's search handles 2.2 billion search queries a day,
he said. That means there's nothing but "wide-open opportunity."
Indeed, MSN is serious about search beyond the Web.
The latest technology that engineers from across all of Microsoft's
divisions is designed to enable users to search their personal computer
for files, contacts, music and video collections stored in the hard
drives.
Right now, "you can't find things on the Intranets or local
PCs," Mehdi said as he gave the audience a sneak preview of
live code that wasn't yet shipped.
As an example, Mehdi said that someone searching for "physicians"
can type in that keyword, and the searcher's entire hard drive,
e-mail messages, address book or even Power Point slides that include
physicians will be listed on a results page. "This service
will move beyond what's out there today he said."
MSN targeting Google, but not Yahoo?
Notably, Mehdi said that many of MSN's users left for other search
engines, like Google. Mehdi did not mention Yahoo (YHOO) as a competitor.
Earlier in the day, Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, also mentioned
Google, as well as Apple Computer (APPL), Nokia (NOK) and Sony (SNE)
as competitors in the consumer sector. But Gates didn't mention
Yahoo.
As MSN takes a page out of Google's how-to-build-an-inviting-search-Web
site, it also plans to add other features it feels will bring back
its users.
For instance, MSN plans to ad one-click access to e-mail on its
new search page, it unveiled at the start of July. See MSN search
site.
Mehdi also elaborated on MSN's new personalized news search service.
Earlier this week, MSN revealed some search products that it is
testing, such as the personalized newsstand. See MSNBC.com tests
newsbot.
The other big upside for MSN will be online advertising, said Mehdi,
who showcased a couple of video ads.
Top advertisers Procter & Gamble and McDonald's are embracing
the Web, he said, adding that P&G plans to spend $20 million
in online ads.
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