November 16th, 2009

Microsoft search share continues its slow upward crawl

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:54 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Google, Search, Yahoo

Tags: Yahoo! Inc., ComScore Networks Inc., Microsoft Corp., October comScore Number, Games, Personal Technology, Mary Jo Foley

The October comScore numbers are in and Microsoft has inched upward for another month with its Bing search engine.

In October, Bing reached 9.9 percent, in terms of percentage share of U.S. searches. Bing hit 9.4 percent in September, comScore’s data indicates.

Bing’s growth came at Yahoo’s — not Google’s — expense, however. According to comScore, Yahoo was down to 18.0 percent share in October, from 18.8 percent in September. Meanwhile, Google’s U.S. search share rose to 65.4 in October,from 64.9 in September, based on comScore’s data.

In October, Microsoft began rolling out a number of enhancements to Bing, culminating in a bigger “2.0″ fall refresh last week.

If Microsoft’s search game plan is built on the idea of growing share substantially by combining forces with Yahoo, Yahoo’s continuing share loss is looking less and less likely to shore up that plan.

November 11th, 2009

Bing 2.0 debuts

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:38 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, MSN, Search, Windows Live

Tags: Update, Microsoft Corp., Web Site Development, Web Technology, Business Structures, Strategy, Search, Internet, Finance, Management

Microsoft is rolling out over the next few weeks its first major release of Bing since the search engine launched in June.

(The Softies don’t like the “Bing 2.0″ moniker, but that’s how some zealous Microsoft employees who heard about the forthcoming update described it earlier this summer. When Microsoft rolled out its new visual search capability a couple months ago, officials did acknowledge a bigger refresh of Bing was on tap for this fall.)

Just to be really clear, if you go to the Bing.com page today, it doesn’t look or seem any different. It’s going to take a while for the Bing servers to be populated with the refresh.

On November 11, a  Microsoft spokesperson sent the following information about the new Bing update:

“The update includes a partnership with computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha, which will incorporate health and nutrition-related structured data from Wolfram Alpha into Bing results.

“We’re also rolling out a number of updates to Bing. This rolling update will include new features such as localized results for weather and events and City Slideshows. It will also include updates to existing features, such as an improved Bing Shopping experience and the next generation of Hover Preview, which lets people view a snapshot of a website or search within that website before clicking through.  Please note that all new features including the Wolfram Alpha integration will be rolling out to select groups and will not be fully available to our entire customer base for several weeks. “

In related news, Microsoft this week rolled out Bing Videos, a refresh of MSN Videos that incorporates the Bing search technology. Bing Videos is now the single hub for video content from MSN, Hulu, YouTube and other content sources.

Update: There’s more on the Microsoft-Wolfram partnership in a November 11 posting to the Wolfram Alpha blog. The Wolfram execs note that Microsoft is one of the first commercial customers for the recently introduced Wolfram Alpha application-programming interface (API). From that post:

“By using our API, Bing will be able to seamlessly access the tens of thousands of algorithms and trillions of pieces of data from Wolfram|Alpha, and directly incorporate the computations in its search results.”

Update 2: There are more details about the steps leading up to the bigger Bing refresh in a November 10 posting to the Bing Community blog.

“Since June we’ve released a bunch of new stuff to try and meet the demands of our users – Twitter integration, Visual Search, Twitter Search, better maps, and a host of user interface and index improvements. But being the true search geeks that we are, we knew we needed to keep our eye on the prize: we still need to help people make better decisions with more confidence. We are, after all, a Decision Engine not just a Search Engine.

“So we listened: we talked to people in small groups all across the nation, we worked with search pioneers outside the company to get their take on what we were missing, and we listened to the quiet and fleeting clues about what you want in search by analyzing reams of data.”

The results of this “listening tour” are features like more shortcuts, more visual search results, more exposure to results via “hovering” functionality, a new event search feature and more. It sounds like the team is going to trickle out more details of what’s in Bing 2.0 over the next few days.

November 4th, 2009

The long and winding road to MSN's reinvention as a social hub

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:54 am

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Google, MSN, Search, Silverlight (wpf/e), Yahoo

Tags: MSN, Microsoft Corp., Portals, Web Technology, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

It took a couple of years, but Microsoft is finally making good on some of the ideas officials had for making the company’s MSN home page more viable.

Back in 2007, former Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Online Services Group Steve Berkowitz said Microsoft’s goal was to integrate more social-networking tools and pre-programmed content into the MSN home page. On November 4, Microsoft made public a preview of a new MSN home page that integrates Facebook and Twitter. (And Windows Live, too, the Softies note, usually as an afterthought.)

The revamped MSN home page — which execs say is the most sweeping face-lift the MSN.com site has had in close to a decade — looks less cluttered and easier to navigate. It’s also faster to load and has lost a lot of the “blue links” that dominate the current MSN.com page. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft’s Bing search technology is deeply integrated into the new design.

See Gallery: The past and future of MSN

The final version of the new MSN.com is slated to go live in early 2010.

“If there’s a hot new search term, we can put that on the page. We can surface Twitter and Facebook feeds to make real-time search available on MSN,” said Bob Visse, General Manager of MSN Product Management.

There’s also a big focus on making “local experiences” easier for MSN.com users to find and surface, Visse said. Microsoft will allow users to “interact with content in a programmable way.” Silverlight isn’t required, but if users have it installed on their PCs, it will “enhance” their video-viewing experience, Visse said. He said Microsoft will offer a list of Silverlight applications — such as gas-price indicator, for example — that users can get if they have Microsoft’s Flash competitor installed.

In 2008, Microsoft made MSN part of the combined Search, Portal and Advertising Group as part of one of the company’s regular reorgs. At that time, officials said Microsoft’s goal was to make MSN.com more of a socially networked platform. In an e-mail to employees, Senior Vice President of R&D for Online Services Satya Nadella said MSN was  Microsoft’s single largest source of ad revenue. He also promised that the next version of MSN would be “a software engine that delivers the most relevant and social online content experience.”

It’s easy to forget that shortly before Microsoft decided to focus on MSN as one of its major vehicles for consumer outreach, advertising and search that the company came close to getting out of the portal business. Berkowitz was one of the main execs who helped convince management that there was value in MSN and that Microsoft should keep the platform around.

These days, Microsoft is claiming that it has the largest worldwide audience of any of the consumer-focused portals on the Web. According to the company, 100 million people in the U.S. visit MSN every single month, and MSN added over 10 million new customers in the past year.

October 30th, 2009

Microsoft refreshes Bing for touch phone users

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:35 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Search, Windows Mobile

Tags: Phone, Microsoft Corp., Telecom & Utilities, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft made available on October 30 an update to its Bing search engine for mobile browsers that includes support for high-resolution touch devices.

The new update is available at m.bing.com. Besides including touch support (for U.S. phone owners only), Microsoft also added a new National Football League (NFL) feature that allows users to see upcoming games, stats, and real-time updates (also in the U.S. only); and flight status updates (by entering the airline and flight number). Touch phone users also can access a new Bing Movies feature that allows users searching for movies in particular cities to see movies playing nearby, showtimes, overviews, trailers and video clips.

Microsoft officials mentioned the new features in a blog post today.

October 30th, 2009

Pre-Halloween scare-off: Bing middle school jingle vs. VS 2010 bug killer

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:59 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Development tools, Housekeeping, Search, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii")

Tags: School, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Development Tools, Corporate Communications, Development Tools, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Marketing, Mary Jo Foley

Which is more frightening — Microsoft convincing a bunch of middle school students to sing the Bing jingle or the antics of sleep-depraved developers trying to stomp the remaining bugs out of Visual Studio 2010?

It’s the pre-Halloween scare-off. Here’s the Channel 9 night of the living bug killers video:

And the Pennsylvania middle school Bing squad in action:

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Happy Halloween!

October 19th, 2009

Ad agencies to DOJ: We like the Microsoft-Yahoo deal

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:19 pm

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Google, Legal, Search, Yahoo

Tags: Advertisement, Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., U.S. Department Of Justice, Mary Jo Foley

Four big ad agencies, under the auspices of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, has issued a public letter to the U.S. department of Justice supporting the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, which the pair proposed in July.

The letter, dated October 19, is short and to the point. Here’s the full text:

“Advertising is the fuel that powers the Internet. Most websites depend on online advertising to survive – it’s what allows them to offer consumers free content and services.

“A very important form of online advertising is search advertising – the sponsored links that appear when a search engine answers a query. A healthy, competitive market for search and search advertising is crucial to the Internet’s future.

“We believe that Yahoo! and Microsoft’s proposal to combine their technologies and search platforms is good for advertisers, marketing services agencies, website publishers and consumers.

“These benefits are too important to wait for. As leading members of the advertising and marketing services industry, we urge the Department of Justice to bring its antitrust review to a speedy conclusion. This proposal enhances competition, and should be allowed to take effect as soon as possible”

The Advertising Association’s President and CEO Nancy Hill; Maurice Levy, Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe; Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP; Michael I. Roth, Chairman and CEO, Interpubic Group of Companies; and John Wren, President and CEO, Omnicom Group all signed the note. (Microsoft recently sold its Razorfish ad subsidiary to Publicis Groupe for $530 million.)

Yahoo officials issued a statement on October 19, noting: “Yahoo welcomes the broad support this deal has received, and remains hopeful that the closing of this transaction can occur in early 2010…. In light of the fact that we’re in our quiet period ahead of earnings tomorrow, we’re not able to comment further.”

Microsoft and Yahoo announced their intention to enter into a complex partnership, via which Microsoft’s Bing engine would power a number of Yahoo’s online properties and Yahoo sales reps would sell ads for Microsoft properties. Some Yahoo employees (400 or so) are due to become Microsoft employees as part of the transaction.

The pair is hoping that by pooling their search assets they’ll creat a more formidable No. 2 online search/advertising alternative to Google. The deal is subject to regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and possibly abroad.

October 14th, 2009

ComScore: Microsoft's Bing holds steady in its search share

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:30 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Google, Search, Yahoo

Tags: ComScore Networks Inc., Microsoft Corp., Mary Jo Foley

While some other reports have claimed that Microsoft lost a point — or in some cases, substantially more — of the U.S. search it has been slowly but steadily gaining, comScore is claiming Bing actually grew a bit.

(As I’ve noted before, instead of confusing matters by comparing different search-engine watchers’ data, I’ve decided to focus exclusively on one data provider — comScore — when doing month-to-month comparisons. I didn’t choose comScore because they’ve been most favorable to Microsoft. I feel as though comScore is one of the best known and most trusted of the search numbers-keepers. That’s it.)

In August, according to comScore, Bing’s U.S. search share was at 9.3 percent, which was up from 8.9 percent in Juy. In September, comScore is reporting, Bing’s share was 9.4 percent.

That 9.4 percent still pales in comparison to Google (with 64.9 percent of the U.S. search market in September) and Yahoo (with 18.8 percent, a .5 percent decline compared to August). But it’s still not a marked decline.

October 1st, 2009

Microsoft shuffles its advertising engineering deck

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:07 am

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Google, MSN, Search, Yahoo

Tags: Advertisement, Microsoft Corp., Alexander Gounares, Alex, Nadella, Research & Development, Business Operations, Mary Jo Foley

Alexander Gounares, Corporate Vice President of Advertising Research and Development for Microsoft, is no longer in charge of engineering for Microsoft’s digital advertising products.

In response to my query, a Microsoft spokesperson sent on October 1 a confirmation and explanation of what Gounares will be doing:

“Alex Gounares is transitioning to a new role becoming the CTO for the Online Services Division, reporting to Satya Nadella. Alex is looking forward to taking some well-earned parental leave, before returning to play a pivotal role by driving cross-cutting strategy and future-thinking for the entire division.”

I’ve asked how long Gounares will be gone and who will be taking his place. No word back yet on either of those questions.

Update: Rajat Taneja will become the CVP of Program Management for Ad Platform. The spokesperson added: “Rajat’s charter will include partnering very closely with Scott Howe and the business team to ensure tight connection between our business strategy and technology roadmap and delivery.” Meanwhile, Don Gagne will be promoted to CVP of Development for Ad Platform. “Prior to OSD R&D in the search team a few months ago, Don led Office engineering,” the spokesperson added.

Gounares is taking a four-week leave, the spokesperson also said.

Gounares’ next boss will be Nadella, who  is the Senior Vice President for Research and Development with Mcirosoft’s Online Services Division. Nadella leads engineering for Bing, MSN and Microsoft’s advertising platforms.

Gounares has been with Microsoft since 1993, and spent three years during his career as the technology assistant to Chairman Bill Gates. Prior to heading ad research and development, he was Corporate Vice President for Corporate Strategy. He also, at one point, was responsible for leading the creation of the original Microsoft Tablet PC platform. This past summer, he was one of 40-plus individual appointed to head up the review of ThinkWeek papers inside Microsoft

Products like Microsoft adCenter are central to Microsoft’s push to try to attract advertisers who want to run ads across Microsoft’s Bing search, video, gaming and mobile platforms.

October 1st, 2009

Microsoft adds consumer-friendly face to its HealthVault platform

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:04 am

Categories: Azure, Corporate strategy, Healthcare, MSN, Search, Silverlight (wpf/e), Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Microsoft HealthVault, Health Care, Microsoft Corp., Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare, Human Resources, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft launched on October 1 a beta of a new MSN service aimed at helping consumers manage their own health information.

The new service, known as My Health Info, is based on Microsoft’s HealthVault. HealthVault is a software and services platform that is hosted on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-computing environment. The service makes use of Silverlight and allows users to search for health-related topics via Bing.

My Health Info is designed to allow consumers to store all kinds of personal health information, like childrens’ vaccination schedules, prescription records, blood sugar levels, etc. It also will allow consumers to monitor “topical areas of interest,” like swine flu. The service can be configured to maintain separate records on multiple people, so that a user could manage information on multiple family members.

At the end of August in 2009, Microsoft removed the two-year-old beta tag from HealthVault. There’s no word on when Microsoft expects to do the same with the new MSN health service.

My Health Info makes use of the same security and privacy mechanisms that HealthVault itself does. All health data is encrypted; every time data is changed or read, a log is generated; and HTTPS is the protocol via which information is passed, according to Microsoft officials.

Microsoft created the new service to serve the 83 percent of people who search for health-related information on the Web, officials said. Serving ads on health content is also a huge opportunity for the company.

September 21st, 2009

Microsoft's Bing search share up to 9.3 percent

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:24 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Google, Search, Yahoo

Tags: U.S., Researcher, Microsoft Corp., Mary Jo Foley

There are lots of different analyses of search share, but I try to be consistent and always cite data from a single researcher, so that it’s an oranges to oranges comparison.

ComScore, the researcher I cite, hasn’t released its search data to the public or press yet for the month of August. But it looks like it has made it available to Wall Street.

The results (according to a second-hand account from JP Morgan):

• Bing’s U.S. query share was up to 9.3 percent for August. It was 8.9 percent in July. (Microsoft launched Bing in early June.)
• Yahoo’s U.S. search share held constant from July to August, with 19.3 percent share.
• Google saw its U.S. search share dip slightly (by 0.1 percent) to 64.6 percent share in August.

Microsoft is rolling out incremental updates to Bing on a monthly basis and is planning a bigger Bing update for later this fall.