With today’s HP announcement and the recent MSN toolbar release, I want to discuss our recent moves in the toolbar space. Overall, these distribution deals come down to three things:
1. Live Search is ready for primetime
These types of deals require a search engine that can stand on its own, as we all know how easy it is to switch to another search engine. Sure, Live Search has room to improve, but we’re confident that when consumers now try Live Search they’ll get relevant results, differentiated experiences, and a unique value proposition (see cashback).
2. Distribution can help with awareness and preference
We’re building a stronger consumer connection that starts with awareness and ends with preference. To be successful, we not only need to care about traditional consumer marketing campaigns to drive awareness. We also need to care about how other channels can help spread the word. We recognize that awareness for Live Search is low and that to crack into the consumer’s consciousness we need to be in front of them in more ways than one. Case in point: check out our new Search Share Facebook app.
3. Enabling partners is good for everyone
We need to provide publishers and our partners, like HP, with great tools and platforms to help them distribute content and reach their customers in new ways. The toolbar platform we have created exemplifies how we’re looking to extend customer service, brands, and content through great new experiences. With this platform we will be able to quickly build a branded feature and content-rich toolbar for HP’s entire line of US-based consumer PCs with just a few easy customizations. When the toolbar is released, HP will offer easy access to their online services like Snapfish and customer support, and bring their brand to life through Silverlight. Now imagine that type of customization for anyone and everyone on the Internet.
The HP toolbar highlights our excitement about the new developments we’re working on. Let us know what you think of the new toolbars.
Mikko Ollila, Product Manager, Live Search Partner Ecosystem
PingBack from http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1999
From the picture you published in the article it looks pretty good. Slick I would say. What happens if your screen resolution is a lot smaller then the depicted image?
I also would like to see some indication of relevancy (or page rank) of the page I am browsing. It helps me determine which page is worthwhile reading.
Live Search relevancy is really aweful - nowhere near as good as Google's or Yahoo's. For instance, try to search for "windows live spaces blog". Yahoo and Google both have Spaces Space Craft as the third site. On Live Search, the result isn't even on the first page. Remember, this is a Microsoft page!! Shouldn't Microsoft's own search engine give it a decent ranking?? The worst part is that Microsoft doesn't seem to recognize this fact and is now making deals that will totally allienate customers and make a bigger laughing stock out Live than it already is (actually, few know about it so not that big a laughing stock yet). Microsoft would be better to work on getting relevancy at least close to the other search engines before pushing it to vendors like HP.
Also, how come the Live Search blog never has any commentary from Microsoft about what they are doing, if anything, to get the relevancy accurate? I mean, is it worth continuing to use Live in the hope that it gets better or should I just use Google because I get what I want, first crack?
Disappointed Shareholder!!
On HPs
DO NOT BLOK your competition or thare may be hell to pay from your user's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I'm not going to be using the toolbar. The only reason I even used Live Search was to search for books. Now I'm unable to find a single book using Live Search. You won't find me returning to live.com in the future.
I have just done a search for "cambridge hotel" on http://search.live.com (I am in the UK)
I then click on "Map" and got redirected to multimap that showed me a map that was not of Cambridge. I used to be able to get useful maps from live.com, however for some reason I now have multimap forced on me, it is match worse the maps.google.co.uk or live maps)
Why would I install the Live search toolbar? Put bluntly, Google gets search while Microsoft does not. Witness the closure of the Books Live search by Microsoft. The one feature that frequently attracted me to select Live search in addition to Google has now been disabled. I shake my head in wonder and can only say -- as I have been saying for six years -- Google gets search while Microsoft does not.