Microsoft News Tracker

If Microsoft is ever to get out of 3rd place in Web search behind Google and Yahoo they are going to have to do something different. One of the cards they plan to play is an investment in improved search technologies and while there were some on display when Windows Live Search launched last week, it looks like there’s another one up their sleeve - faceted search. Paula J. Hane at Information Today:

Last week, Microsoft announced a major upgrade to the new search engine it has been testing since March. It has moved its Windows Live Search and Live.com out of beta status and said that Live Search will power the search capability on MSN, the company’s news and entertainment portal. A new feature is the Related Search function, which is designed to help users refine a query by simply clicking on a list of related terms. The unusually low-key and minimalist press announcement generated little excitement. After some poking around, Information Today, Inc. learned from search expert Stephen E. Arnold that Microsoft has even more potent technology ready to deploy.

Unlike the upgrade to Live.com, which, according to a Microsoft spokesperson, just uses algorithms that mine previously submitted queries to the engine, the new and unannounced search system brings faceted search to a Microsoft application. Try it yourself at http://rwsm.directtaps.net. The Microsoft project, called Search Results Clustering (SRC), currently offers a search beta and downloadable toolbar.

What Microsoft is doing is called text mining. This is jargon for discovering people, places, things, and other facts from text. These facts are then organized so a user can point and click on a category and see the related information. The approach is the secret sauce for such companies as Exalead in Paris and Endeca in Boston.

Arnold, who is the author of Enterprise Search Report, 3rd edition, and the forthcoming Text Mining Report, said: “If Microsoft makes this function part of SharePoint, it will pose a serious threat to companies offering SharePoint-specific search enhancements and be a strong competitive challenge to Google and its Appliance and OneBox API. If Microsoft puts this technology in Live.com, that service will almost certainly see an increase in traffic. Microsoft had to do something, and this Vivisimo-like clustering may be one of Microsoft’s most significant advances yet.”

There’s much more by following the link, but the project is from Microsoft Research Asia’s Search Technology Center which was established in October, 2005 and is apparently yet another Microsoft organization working on search technology.

As for faceted search itself, the basic idea is to not only provide search results for the specific term provided by the user, but also for various “facets” of the specific term. An example would be if the user searched for “boots,” facets might be “fashion,” “western,” or “mens” which further segment the search space. The user then could click on the facet of interest which would have more facets.

The real trick, of course, is to discover meaningful facets for arbitrary search terms and the Microsoft project performs it via on-the-fly cluster analysis of the results of the original search term. Hit the link in the quote above and kick the tires for yourself.

After dropping slightly in July, Google’s search US share was up slightly in August:

Google Inc.’s share of the 6.5 billion Web searches conducted in the U.S. in August inched up, reversing a loss the company saw in July, according to reports from comScore Networks and Nielsen NetRatings released Tuesday.

Data from comScore, an Internet research company, showed Google held a 44.1 percent share of U.S. search queries, up from 43.7 percent in July. Nielsen NetRatings estimated the share at 50.2 percent, up from 49.2 percent last month.

Microsoft is reportedly in 3rd place as usual and comScore has them at %12.5 down from %12.8 in July and %15.8 a year ago, while I have yet to see the Nielsen details for Microsoft. As always, we’re talking small changes in the monthly numbers, but if you would like to try to discern longer term trends, Danny Sullivan has the Nielsen numbers graphed for 19 months up through July at SearchEngineWatch.

Yahoos shares dropped today and pulled the market and shares of other search companies lower when it reported weakness in online ad revenue:

Yahoo Inc. said on Tuesday it expects third-quarter revenue at the bottom half of its forecast range due to weakness from two of its biggest advertising segments, sending shares down as much as 13 percent.

Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker told investors at a Goldman Sachs media conference that Yahoo has seen “a little bit of weakness in the last few weeks” in auto and financial services advertising.

“It’s a new trend. It’s been two to three weeks and we don’t know yet if it’s an indicator of a broader slowdown,” Decker later told reporters at the conference.

Offhand, it’s easy to come up with reasons why financial services (think housing slowdown) and the auto industry (think US automaker difficulties) might not be advertising as much.

Automakers in particular have moved a large portion of their advertising to the Web in the last three years, but industry leaders like General Motors and Ford Motor Co. have been slashing billions of dollars in total costs as they grapple with losses in the North American market.

“It feels and smells like a macro” problem, rather than something specific to Yahoo or the Internet industry, said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Global Crown Capital LLC.

“It would be naive to say that advertisers would continue to pour ahead on online advertising and cut back only on traditional advertising in the face of economic weakness,” he said.

Who knew that online advertising was subject to the ordinary laws of the market? Henry Blodget opines:

In coming days, a parade of analysts will eloquently explain why the trends that are hobbling Yahoo! won’t affect Google–Google’s revenue is pay-per-click, Google is a “must buy” for advertisers, Google has a much stronger market position, etc. Listen politely, but don’t believe it.

Google is now a $7 billion global business with one primary revenue stream: advertising. Google may do better in a recession than, say, a television network, but that doesn’t mean it will do well. $7 billion is a significant chunk of not only online advertising but all advertising, and if all advertising slows (or, worse, shrinks), Google’s revenue will, too.

I guess ad-supported software isn’t all upside.

Microsoft sued over Forefront security brand:

A maker of software for construction companies has sued Microsoft over its use of the Forefront name for its security software.

Seattle-based Dexter + Chaney has been selling its “Forefront Construction Management Software” for nearly two decades, the company’s spokesman Brad Mathews said Friday. “The brand has come to mean a great deal to us and our clients, and we hope to our prospects as well,” he said.

Dexter + Chaney filed suit against Microsoft on Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. The company is seeking an injunction barring Microsoft from using the Forefront name.

Microsoft announced Forefront in June as a single brand that encompasses updated and upcoming security products aimed at businesses. “They will be selling under our brand to the very same people that we sell to,” Mathews said. “Before the marketplace gets confused, and our business is hurt, we’d like them to pick another name.”

Microsoft’s new Forefront branding was announced back in June. I’ll refrain from attempting to explain trademark law and merely observe that there’s a good reason why all the Web 2.0 start-ups have “made up words” as names. Maybe Microsoft should have tried a brand like “Forfro.”

Microsoft files 20 more antipiracy lawsuits:

Continuing its worldwide assault on software piracy, Microsoft has filed 20 lawsuits against resellers accused of distributing unauthorized copies of its software.

The lawsuits, filed against 20 resellers in the U.S., accuse the companies of either distributing counterfeit software on CDs or installing it on PCs that are then sold to consumers and businesses, a practice known as hard disk loading, Microsoft said Tuesday.

The official press release is here and has some details of the forensic analysis of the counterfeit Windows XP CDs which frankly seem like junk. Apparently the resellers were caught by customers dropping a dime on them.

EU’s Kroes denies vendetta against Microsoft:

EU antitrust chief Neelie Kroes on Tuesday rejected an accusation she was pursuing a vendetta against U.S. software giant Microsoft and said she suspected a “coordinated campaign” to discredit her agency.
…
She was responding to a letter published by the newspaper from a Microsoft business partner who accused the EU Commission of “playing games” with Microsoft by raising concerns over the Vista operating system that could delay its launch in Europe.

It would help MS. Kroes’s case if she weren’t such an inveterate publicity hound. Of course, Microsoft continues to throw her red meat with their inclination to bundle applications into Vista and Office whose functionality was previously offered by third party developers.

Microsoft’s Web video sharing competitor to YouTube and Google Video that was rumored a couple of weeks ago has been been formally unveiled at MSN Soapbox where you can sign up for an invitation to participate in the beta. This project (codenamed “Warhol”) had originally been expected to arrive as Windows Live Video, but apparently the “content” nature of even user created video was enough to push it under MSN Video as part of the MSN brand.

Besides basic video sharing, MSN Soapbox offers a variety of social networking trimmings so dear to the heart of Web 2.0 fans:

Like competing video-sharing services, Soapbox will allow users not only to upload videos to the Web in almost any digital video format, but also to tag and categorize them so other users can find them.

The service will let users both watch videos and browse for new ones simultaneously on the same screen, something that differentiates it from YouTube, Microsoft said.

Other features in Soapbox include the ability for users to set up RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for videos in which they are interested, and to embed videos directly into their personal blogs. To achieve the latter, Microsoft eventually will set up one-click integration between Soapbox and Windows Live Spaces, letting users upload videos from Soapbox to their Windows Live Spaces pages by clicking on a button. Eventually, Soapbox will be integrated throughout many of Microsoft’s online services, which include Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail.

The Soapbox service will work with IE 6 or later browsers running on Windows XP, and the Firefox 1.0.5 browser or later running on Windows XP or Macintosh OS X.

There aren’t any ads visible on the beta screenshots I have seen and naturally my thoughts turned to monetization schemes. The above article by Elizabeth Montalbano at InfoWorld says:

Like its other Web-based services, Microsoft aims for Soapbox, too, to generate revenue by luring online advertisers, the company said. Though it won’t be ad supported in its initial release, Microsoft hopes the service will feature advertising down the line.

On the other hand, Elinor Mills at CNET says:

Unlike YouTube, Soapbox will have no advertisements, but Bennett said Microsoft can monetize the video by showing it on the main MSN Video site or by creating a “viral video hub.”

Why does this sound like monetization was an afterthought? I’m beginning to wonder if Microsoft really gets this ad supported software thing.