Windows Live Product Search!

Betsynote: In advance of questions – Yes, this works stuff in Firefox. Yes, I want to go shopping. We are pleased to announce the beta release of Windows Live Product Search (http://products.live.com). Product search leverages the latest research from Microsoft Research Asia to find products available on the internet for sale.  At beta, the index contains commercial offers from over 100,000 sellers, which is made possible by...
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Shoutout to Robert Scoble and our pals at Webmaster World!

Shoutout from our team to Robert Scoble, who is onstage at Webmaster World Wednesday morning. He will be doing a keynote panel (Morning Coffee Session with The Super Bloggers Of Search (Robert Scoble, Jeremy Zawodny, Matt Cutts ), talking about the cool macros stuff Andy Edmonds showed him last week and of course, the launch of Academic Search. You go, Robert! –Betsy Aoki  4/19 Addendum – the crew wants to send another...
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Windows Live Academic search

We are pleased to announce the beta release of Windows Live Academic Search (http://academic.live.com).  Academic search helps users to locate information in academic journal content, and allowing them to complete their research and information gathering work more efficiently. At beta, the index focuses on journal content from the subjects of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Physics – we will be expanding the index to...
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Find a date for the holidays

Betsy Aoki’s note: I am using this opportunity to horn in on a blog post with an intriguing subject line and announce my presence on the MSN Search blog. While it seems hard to fill  Brady Forrest’s shoes (because I think he’s at least a men’s size 11 and I’m a women’s size 8) , the search powers that be over here have asked me to take on the running of this  blog. This team blog stuff is different...
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MSN Search Outage

First of all, we’d like to apologize for the lateness of this blog post. We know folks have been concerned about the recent outage of MSN Search, what that means for them and us, and what we are doing to address it. A lot of the team was engaged in technical matters yesterday and today is really the first chance we’ve had to catch our breath and talk more about it. Next time we will be more ready to blog and let you know what the word...
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Build Your Own Search Engine

Ever wanted to create your own search engine?  Or use a search engine that’s tailored to the specific topic you’re interested in?  Last Friday we released a new Live Search feature called Search Macros that enables you to do this! What are Search Macros?Search Macros are a feature of Live Search that make results more relevant for a given search topic.  This is done by easily using, creating and sharing customized sets...
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New Toolbar Release: Windows Live Toolbar beta available

We have released the Windows Live Toolbar beta which adds some really cool technology from Onfolio, a company we just acquired. Onfolio grabs scraps of web pages to be shared or viewed later, which is my favorite part. Also, it allows you to collect and read feed collections via a great reader that is integrated into IE so you can read all your feeds in one place. This is a great tool to help organize information that you find on the web. In...
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What’s new with Windows Live Search?

We’ve  launched new features designed to put the user in control, while making search tasks easier and more natural Live Search. There are a host of subtle changes that we hope just make the experience a bit more pleasant, like better description text and improved typography to make quickly scanning results easier. We’ve also tidied up the look of the page from the last version because, well, we look at this page every day, too...
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See you at ETech

    This week the MSN Search, Live.com, MSN Spaces, IE and many other Microsoft teams will be attending ETech in San Diego. We’re proud to be a sponsor of this geek mecca. If you are attending be sure to stop by the booth to see our latest software, meet us, or just to say “Hi”. You can also see us talk at the following times: Simple Bridge-building Ray Ozzie Time: Tuesday 8:40AM – 9:10AM Location: Elizabeth...
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Customer Focused … Humble … Under Promise/Over Deliver …

Customer Focused … Humble … Under Promise/Over Deliver … These are some of the key cultural traits the Web Search team here at Microsoft tries to live by.  Boy, were we surprised to wake up yesterday to a bunch of press saying things like “Microsoft:  Give us Six Months to Beat Google” and “Microsoft: We’ll Beat Google at Its Own Game”.  What’s up with those headlines? ...
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