Microsoft News Tracker

Bill Gates famously suggested that Microsoft might buy the affections of Internet searchers and that seems to have come true as market research firms Compete and comScore have both reported a substantial jump in Microsoft’s June US search share due to an offering of prizes for searchers via  Microsoft’s Live Search Club promotion.

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The Windows Home Server Blog announced RTM today:

Today we are announcing that Windows Home Server has been released to manufacturing (RTM). We have finalized the software and now handing it off to our OEM partners. The evaluation version (with 120 day evaluation period) and the system builder version are also heading into the distribution channels and will be available in the next couple of months. French, German and Spanish versions will be finalized shortly, and OEM products will hit retail shelves this fall.

We’re also excited to announce Iomega and Fujitsu-Siemens Computers (FSC) as new OEMs planning to ship Windows Home Server products later this year.

As I mentioned back in June when the release candidate came out, Windows Home Server has some very worthwhile features, but it will live or die with the OEMs who can easily price it into a tiny niche if they aren’t careful. Hopefully at least one will grasp the concept of appliance pricing.

Last week Microsoft UK revealed a rather flashy looking search appliance based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search (MOSS07 for Search). Microsoft’s Mike Pallot elaborates:

The main announcement was that we in the UK have launched the first ever Microsoft based Search Appliance. SCAN Technologies have partnered with us to use their expertise and our technology to build on MOSS 07 and deliver a very simple to install, configure and deploy MOSS 07 based Search Appliance.

It’s not quite ready for prime time (Pallot asks those interested to contact him directly), but it is apparently coming this year:

Microsoft will launch its first search appliance this year, based on a relationship with UK-based Scan Computers. Scan’s Orange Spider Search is designed to let firms add in SharePoint Server capabilities in a four-step process.

Mike Pallot, Microsoft channel development manager for search, said, “We’re in the early stages but it’s a pre-built server that makes it easy to deploy SharePoint without IT assistance. It’s not a ploy to go head-to-head with the Google Search Appliance but it lets you deploy a familiar environment and link people search to CRM capabilities.”

The above makes it seem both more and less than one would expect. It’ll be interesting to see the full details on this puppy.

Last week Microsoft released version 2 of their mobile search application featuring “Improved Navigation, Cache, Movie Searching, GPS, Traffic reporting and more.”

The Mobile Search team has released V2 of the rich client application for Windows Mobile, as well as a major update to the browser based interface. Whether you have a J2ME (Java) phone, Windows Mobile phone, or any other device with a mobile browser, Live Search has you covered with maps, directions and business search. The J2ME and Windows mobile applications add a bunch of advanced features not possible in the browser based app. There’s also a beta version of the client app for Blackberry devices.

There are more details and screenshots by following the link. When version 1 was released in February the Windows Mobile and Java versions were respectively named Windows Live Search for Windows Mobile and Windows Live Search for Java, but the branding has apparently now been fuzzed with all variants now going under the name of “Live Search for Mobile” or permutations thereof. There are more details on the rich client versions at the FAQ and downloads page (USA and UK only) and the mobile browser version is at http://m.live.com/.