| I am blessed with opportunity of interacting with “Gen Y” and their online behaviour, particularly search. |  |
The term “Googling” is very synonymous for search with Gen Y and they quickly associate with that brand with innovation and in fact Google ranks higher in their innovation chart.
n the other hand a quick scan on Microsoft’s Search assets indicate some of their solid investments in this space,
FAST Search (www.fastsearch.com). This is a company that Microsoft acquired recently in April 2008. Gartner plots Fast as leader and visionary in the Enterprise Search space. In fact this company has acquired two more before being acquired by Microsoft. Corporate Radar, a web based BI Product Company in April 2006 and Convera’s RetrievalWare, a knowledge platform for information retrieval and search in April 2007. Looks like this Retrivalware not only has robust linguistic foundation for disambiguating terms, but also for speeding multilingual and cross-language retrieval.
Tell me (www.tellme.com ) – Tellme improves the way phones connect people and businesses with each other. Unlike other traditional search engines, tellme helps people locate information buy voice. 40 million people use Tellme every month. This is a typical dream of Bill Gates, convergence of technologies for Search.
Powerset (www.powerset.com) – Microsoft acquired this company in June 2008 and it’s a Natural Language Search Engine. It will enable people ask questions and enter phrases instead of just keywords. Powerset provides different kinds of results depending on whether you are searching based on a broad topic, a simple question, or more complex questions and phrases.
MotionBridge (http://mobile.live.com)- If tellme enables you to use voice as way to search, motionbridge makes it easy for doing the same through mobile devices, With GPRS becoming mainstream and 3G phones debuting, internet search using mobile phones will accelerate at a much faster pace. Microsoft acquired this company in February 2006 and already integrated it into their live platform
MedStory (www.medstory.com) – Domain specific search is very niche market. However, when it comes to medical and health related Search, the scope is pretty wide. Microsoft acquired this company in February 2007. This product uses Categorization techniques to deliver Medical Search but I believe, this acquisition will bring capabilities to deliver any domain specific search.
Amalga (www.microsoft.com/amalga) – If MedStory delivers search capabilities to enterprise customers whose requirements are different than internet search, Amalga delivers search capabilities to hospitals within stringent privacy and security requirements. This capability comes from Microsoft’s acquisition of Azyxxi in July 2006. Azyxxi brings together all types of patient data from hundreds of sources and makes them instantly available at the point of care.
Virtual Earth – This platform has again two services. For public internet users, it is delivered through http://maps.live.com. For enterprise customers, this service is through licensing and special SDK www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/product .
Other Search capabilities (www.live.com) - I am impressed with Video, News and Image capabilities of Microsoft through live platform. Not to miss out the recently closed down Book Search that merged into live search. Particularly Microsoft image search is something I always chose to use all the time over Google search. Features like continuous scroll are fantastic value.
I am pretty convinced Microsoft has tirelessly focused on acquiring pretty impressive and right search assets under the wrap over the years and the challenge now is to attract users.
The “Googling” and “Do you Yahoo?” phenomena is cool with the Gen Y and “Living” and “Do you Live” for some reason does not fit well. The other fact, that press refers “Microsoft Search” and NOT “Live Search” is indicator of scheme of things at large.
May be “What is in need is an online brand indeed”
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