Microsoft's Live Web Services Reach Important Milestone

WebKnowHow
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; 03:30 AM

Microsoft announced the release from beta of Live Search and of Live.com in 47 markets worldwide, and final availability of Live Local Search in the U.K. and the U.S. Microsoft also announced that Live Search will now power the Web search capability on MSN, the company’s media and entertainment portal, attracting more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month.

“The launch of Live Search is a significant milestone for our services business, with our core search and monetization platform ready for prime time for MSN and Windows Live as well as for partners through syndication deals,” said Christopher Payne, corporate vice president of Live Search at Microsoft. “We now have the base to weave search through our services in ways that bring value to customers. This is just the beginning. We look forward to continued investment in search to deliver services that bring new levels of control and personalization to the Web experience.”

According to Microsoft, extensive feedback and ongoing testing of each beta service has led to improvements in the user interface and the overall customer experience. These Windows Live milestones represent the first of several more to come this fall that will demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to building and delivering services that bring new levels of control and personalization to the Web experience.

By using Live.com as their personal search home page, customers can harness the power of Live Search to find, customize and track news, images, video, RSS feeds and blogs across the Web. They can try it at http://www.live.com.

Live Local Search will offer increased availability of bird’s-eye imagery, improved mobile integration and functionality, and other user interface improvements and customization tools.

Additional details can be found on the Live Search and Live Local Search team blogs at http://livesearch.spaces.live.com and http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com, respectively.