Live Labs is live!  Live Labs is a joint venture between MSN and MSR that is chartered to create new research opportunities, new prototypes, and new academic funding for internet research.  Search Labs is a companion organization building innovative new products, and with a presence in Silicon Valley as well. The labs will be headed by Gary Flake who joined us from Yahoo, and Ashok Chandra who was at IBM and Verity before joining...
Read More

There’s been quite a frenzy of speculation over the past 24 hours regarding the request by the government for some data in relation to a child online protection lawsuit.  Obviously both privacy and child protection are both super important topics – so I’m glad this discussion is happening. Some facts have been reported, but mostly I’ve seen a ton of speculation reported as facts.   I wanted to use this blog...
Read More

When we ask people what they think of our Instant Answers, a common response is “they are great, but I want MORE”.  We hear you and recently added about 1 million facts for your querying pleasure. Here are a few examples: Baseball stats Numerous statistics for historical baseball players and teams along with season data for current players. babe ruth home runs, babe ruth home runs allowed, ichiro suzuki hits 2003, Seattle...
Read More

A few days ago, Mike Liebhold on Geowanking expressed concern over privacy of personal information in the context of the “Locate Me” feature in Windows Live Local. This has been discussed further on BoingBoing and O’Reilly’s Radar; so we thought of adding some clarity on what goes on behind the scenes in this application and with your information. When you visit the Windows Live Local and hit “Locate Me”...
Read More

When we launched the initial beta of Virtual Earth in the summer, we talked about how we are set to create an immersive experience in local search and mapping. During the last couple of months, we got great deal of feedback from you suggesting new features and sending us bugs – so thank you for your support! Now, we are back with new and exciting features (and don’t just take our word for it, both Michael Arrington and Charlene Li have...
Read More

Danny is holding the last Search Engine Strategies conference of the year in Chicago this week. We’ll be there to answer questions and discuss our products. You can see some of my teammates at the following talks: Tuesday, December 6th (today!)4:30 PM: the Search Ad Vendors – Doug Stotland, Group Product Manager Wednesday, December 7th2:00pm – 3:30pm: Search Engine Q&A on Links – Ramez Naam, Group Program Manager,...
Read More

Over the next two weeks MSN will be offering developer webcasts on MSDN. These will be hands-on classes taught by the developers and PMs who built our APIs. Here’s the schedule: MSDN Webcast: The MSN Search Toolbar: Building Windows Desktop Search into Your Applications (Level 200)Monday, December 5, 20051:00 P.M.–2:00 P.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: Extending Start.com Using Startlets (Level 200)Wednesday, December 7, 20051:00 P.M...
Read More

Around this time of year, we see a big jump in the number of shopping related searches.  More and more people are using a web search engine to kick off the shopping process, and we are always trying to improve the experience.  To help you find what you’re looking for faster, we recently introduced v1 of our Shopping Instant Answer.  This is perfect for those of you that shop in your undies (you know who you are).  We...
Read More

A little over a year ago we began inviting groups of academics, bloggers, siteowners, and technologists out to Redmond to talk about search. We call them Search Champs. We usually select this group based on who we are reading and we think would provide us great insight. We spend a couple of days with the group showing them our future plans, getting their input and making connections. Every time we hold these sessions we inevitably hear from...
Read More

Today at the IT Forum in Barcelona, the latest version of Windows Desktop Search (WDS) and MSN Search Toolbar, both enabled for easy enterprise deployment, will say “Hola!” to the world! With this new release, enterprise IT departments can easily and securely deploy, customize and manage Windows Desktop Search across their entire PC network (both Windows XP and Widnows 2000 SP4+). Not only is WDS free to deploy with your Windows...
Read More