Microsoft News Tracker

Overshadowed by all the hoopla late yesterday over the new betas for Windows Live Search and the new Windows Live Toolbar, the Windows Live Favorites beta also got a refresh featuring better integration with the MSN Toolbar. Yes, the MSN Toolbar. Are there too many duplicate Microsoft online products and betas yet?

Press release:

Today at the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of Windows Live™ Search beta, designed to help people simply find the information on the Web that matters most to them. The new search service offers a new innovative design with rich viewing and organizational tools, extensive search categories such as image and local search, and services that help people customize results. Other core technologies that complement Windows Live Search, including an updated version of Live.com and a Windows Live Toolbar beta, were also released today. These services are now available in the U.S. and in select international markets in which feature availability will vary.
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Windows Live Search delivers the results users are looking for via a unique design with advanced tools for helping people quickly find, view, organize and preview search results. Through new features such as search preview, scoping tools, a search slider bar that increases the level of result information on the results page, and smart scrolling that enables people to view search results without moving from page to page, Windows Live Search delivers enhanced control over the search experience. Through simple precision tools, people can search within the context of the task they are performing and ultimately get their answer fast.
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The new Windows Live Toolbar offers people the ability to search from any Web page using Windows Live Search while helping them easily save, organize and share the information that they find online. Advanced protection against phishing and pop-up blocking also help people browse more safely while they search. Additional features of the beta include RSS detection and automatic aggregation to a person’s personalized Live.com home page, capability for effortless customization so people can choose and arrange only the buttons they want, and tabbed browsing for quicker Web surfing. The Windows Live Toolbar includes technology from Onfolio Inc., which enables customers to save, collect and share any part or the full Web page of the information they discover while searching the Web.
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Live.com, the fast, customizable home page for Windows Live, also released a significant upgrade today, including a new design and features that help users quickly customize their home page, preview content, create multiple pages based on their interests, and add their favorite content from millions of information sources and RSS feeds.

There’s more by following the link. All of this, and particularly the spiffy new Live Search UI, will require some tire kicking to assess the value, but Microsoft is clearly putting some serious thought into these offerings. This is also the beginning of the end for MSN Search and the MSN Toolbar which these Live versions will eventually replace. The Onfolio acquisition is mentioned in the immediately previous post.

Ed Oswald at BetaNews:

Microsoft on Wednesday released betas of two add-ins for its MSN Search Toolbar.
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The Windows Live Favorites add-in enables users to import their current favorites from both Internet and MSN Explorer, and use them right away through the service. New sites can be added with a single click, and favorites can be searched by name, address or keyword.

Users who take advantage of the Windows Live Favorites service would be able to access their saved Web pages from any computer with an Internet connection, including machines based on operating systems other than Windows, Microsoft has said.

The preview add-in allows users of MSN Search to view thumbnails of Web sites beside the links in each search result. Mousing over the thumbnail will magnify the image for closer inspection. Microsoft said this would speed up the search process by eliminating the need to click on every result.

Press release:

Nov. 17, 2005 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that three new data providers, Cyota Inc., Internet Identity and MarkMonitor Inc., will be regularly providing Microsoft with information on confirmed phishing Web sites as part of efforts to help enhance the protection offered by Microsoft® Phishing Filter and Microsoft SmartScreen™ Technology. Microsoft Phishing Filter, introduced in July 2005, helps protect customers from phishing scams when they are browsing the Internet and is available via the Phishing Filter Add-in for the MSN Search Toolbar, which launched in final release today, and the upcoming release of Windows® Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Vista™ and Windows XP Service Pack 2, both currently in beta 1 testing. The phishing information provided by the phishing data providers will also be used to help Microsoft SmartScreen Technology detect phishing scams in e-mail sent to MSN® Hotmail® and Windows Live™ Mail beta customers. This cooperation underscores Microsoft’s goal of continuing to work with a number of organizations to employ an effective mix of data sources and other resources to help protect customers.

Press release:

Today at the annual IT Forum, Microsoft Corp. launched Windows® Desktop Search enabled for enterprise deployment, which allows corporate information workers to quickly find and retrieve precisely what they’re looking for on their personal computers, in e-mail and on network file shares from a single starting point. Launching Windows Desktop Search for enterprise deployment is another step toward achieving Microsoft’s vision for enabling a complete enterprise search experience with search across the PC and e-mail through Windows Desktop Search, across the enterprise intranet environment with Microsoft® SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, and across the Web with MSN® Search.

The new offering of Windows Desktop Search is easy for IT managers to deploy, customize and manage across all Microsoft Windows XP-based or Windows 2000-based PCs in a corporate environment. This supports a powerful and intuitive search experience that can be integrated with familiar environments such as Microsoft Office, SharePoint Portal Server and other third-party enterprise products.

Windows Desktop Search had been available to end users via the MSN Toolbar, but this offering is customized for enterprise users:

The new enterprise version of Windows Desktop Search takes the consumer version of the product offering — which provides fast search capabilities to locate information across e-mail, the desktop or shared network drives — and provides a simple way to deploy and manage this product across the enterprise environment.
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Enterprise customers have the option to deploy the MSN Search Toolbar, which provides a new beta feature that gives people the ability to see integrated Windows Desktop Search results within Microsoft Office Outlook®. IT managers can customize Windows Desktop Search and the MSN Search Toolbar to allow users to easily switch the scope of their search experience from their desktop to the Web or to a corporate intranet, all from one ubiquitous search box.
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IT professionals can easily deploy, customize and manage these search capabilities via Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 or third-party deployment tools. IT professionals can also extend Windows Desktop Search to index additional information sources and file types using IFilters and protocol handlers that are extensively documented on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN®) Web site, http://msdn.microsoft.com. Enterprises can tap into additional product assistance through Microsoft Product Support Services.

Currently supported in 15 languages, with others available soon, Windows Desktop Search for the enterprise can be downloaded for free with a Windows License at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/enterprise.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Google Desktop 2.0 (with desktop search) left beta on November 3 and has both end user and enterprise flavors.

Update (11/16): Chris Kraeuter and Rachel Rosmarin at Forbes survey the enterprise search market.