The Seattle-Search.com Blog

A few choice words may say it best.

Not “B-I-N-G” — “Because It’s Not Google” — but rather…

“And then there were two!”

“Make no mistake, Yahoo’s out of the search game,” confided colleague, search pundit and pioneer, Danny Sullivan. We “know the spin. Better user interface, new ways to innovate, a winning play. Let’s not kid ourselves. They’re done. Not today, not necessarily in a year, but down the line.”

Yahoo was simply spellbound by Google. The Y! leadership couldn’t communicate clearly how it was a strong second place player. The Avis to Google’s Hertz, the Pepsi to their Coke. Yahoo seemed weak, ripe for the picking, and Microsoft went to pluck it last year. Google tried for Yahoo itself through a partnership deal. The US Department Of Justice said “No, no, no.” Do that, and we’ll take anti-trust action against you, Google.

This was not an impulse play, however. CEO Steve Ballmer noted on the conference call that the two sides have a 100-page playbook as opposed to a two-page term sheet and also noted that the negotiations were handled by management as opposed to representatives of the company’s boards. Microsoft did not give Yahoo any up-front payment.

Here are the major deal points:

- Microsoft’s Bing will now be the search engine on all Yahoo sites.
- Microsoft now controls a bit less than 1/3 of the search engine market.
- Yahoo’s search will remain branded by Yahoo.
- Yahoo will provide the relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
- Microsoft will compensate Yahoo through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo’s network. Yahoo will receive 88 percent of revenue from search ads on its site, for the first 5 years.
- The term of the agreement is 10 years.

While this is the fourth reincarnation of the Microsoft search engine, make no mistake: this is Microsoft’s best shot yet at beating its arch rival on its home turf. It’s never put so many resources towards that goal.

“And then there were two!”

Previewed at the AllThingsD conference just a few short days ago and being christened at the start of this week’s Search Marketing Expo (SMX Adanced) at the Bell Harbor Conference Center (Jun 2-3) with a keynote presentation by Dr. Qi Lu, the new Microsoft search engine known as Bing debuts this week. The new search experience is something more than the latest “bling” in search fashion, but Microsoft’s “X-factor” in the competitive search marketplace that it hopes will ring in greater numbers of users and ring up more meaningful market share.

Bing has its roots in the acquired technology of Powerset as a “decision” search engine that is well-suited for comparison shopping among other things. The DNA is expressed in a number of domintant traits. The most fundamental trait is that Bing now organizes search results into categories that expand well beyond the Google tabs of Images,Video, Maps, News, Shopping and More… (and contrasts markedly with the more integrated Google Universal Search). There are 20 results on the Bing Engine Results Page (”BERP?”) rather than the 10 results that have become the norm for standard bearers like Google.

Microsoft is drawing on consumer research of the “next steps” searchers take after getting feedback form a search engine. A famous comment from Bill Gates is that “Search is about verbs.” Searcher want actions, not just data — to reserve a table, book a flight, call a support line. Powerset could give Microsoft the edge it has been looking for.

“Info Mother” Esther Dyson took an early look at Bing (formerly code named Kumo) and penned, “It’s great for consumers and for marketers of products/services, but not so good for intermediaries such as Orbitz and all kinds of shopping sites.” In Dyson’s view, Microsoft is bidding to become the intermediary — or partnering with specific agents such as Open Table.

Clearly, positoning the search engine as a digital concierge that can perform actions for you is not something Google could have taken on given its dominance in Search, nor even the recalcitrant Microsoft of years ago. The timing is right for Bing, not only in terms of the ecommerce connections but in terms of the integration of Search and structured data, to take a significant step forward.

Just about a week ago, Google announced Enhanced Search Snippets and Microformats within its displayed Search Results. Now Microsoft rolls out a category system for managing search in new, structered terms. Isn’t competition sweet?! [24x7]

The final build of Internet Explorer 8 has been released in 25 languages. You can also grab the download directly from these links: Windows XP 32-bit (16.1 MB), Windows XP 64-bit (32.3 MB), Windows Server 2003 32-bit (16.0 MB), Windows Server 2003 64-bit (32.3 MB), Windows Vista 32-bit (13.2 MB), Windows Vista 64-bit (24.3 MB), Windows Server 2008 32-bit (13.2 MB), and Windows Server 2008 64-bit (24.3 MB).

IE8’s new features include Accelerators, Web Slices, and visual search suggestions, which improve how quickly users can get typical browsing tasks done. Accelerators allows users to get—or pass on—information like a map or a definition by right clicking a word on a website and choosing a service from the drop down menu, without ever leaving the page. That means getting directions to the party, figuring out what your friend means when he says he’s an “aficionado,” or even sending something on the page to a friend via e-mail, all from the right click menu.

A Web Slice grabs specific information from a website (like the top stories from Digg or the weather forecast) and puts it in a drop-down menu, eliminating the need to browse to the actual website. ”

An improvement to the search box in the top right: users can get their answers without ever hitting enter, thanks to the drop-down menu that grabs information from the search engine without ever going to the site. The address bar also looks through favorites and history, and opening a new tab shows you a list of tabs you’ve closed recently, making it easier to find the site you visited earlier.

eWeeks Labs calls IE8 a “Must Upgrade.” After its debut last Thursday, those who use Microsoft Internet Explorer as their browser are proving reluctant to adopt the new IE 8. On Friday afternoon, StatCounter Global Stats reported that IE 8 only accounted for about one and a half percent of all internet traffic. That was an increase of less than one and a half percent over Thursday. [24x7]

The Fareologists at Live Search Farecast have issued the 2009 Spring Break Forecast, which uncovers a much-needed break in airfare and hotel rates.

Live Search Farecast, which is known for telling travelers when to buy based on airfare predictions, is currently recommending “Buy Now” 29 percent more often than at this time last year for spring break flight searches. Similarly, premium hotel rates in U.S. spring break destinations have decreased 15 percent since last year. Savvy travelers can maximize their budgets and save more than 20 percent on the total trip cost by choosing the right travel dates, destinations and hotels.

Fares for spring break travel — Feb. 28 through April 5 — are down more than 15 percent from 2008, reaching roughly the same price points as spring break travel in 2007.

Microsoft has released a “Technology Preview” of its new Microsoft Recite application, which will officially be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week.

Recite is an application for Windows Mobile that uses voice search technology to let users record notes for themselves and then later find those notes by speaking back to the application. Here’s an example. You could first tell Microsoft Recite: “Emil’s birthday is February 23″ as well as “Emil wants a 16GB Zune for his birthday.” When you later want to figure out what to get me for my birthday and when it is, you can simply say “Emil’s birthday” into the search function. Saying “Zune” would also bring up the second message, as well as any other entries that also mention “Zune.”

In a Wall Street Journal interview on Friday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and new online services chief Qi Lu, talk about the possibility of a search deal with Yahoo.

Ballmer expressed his belief that a search deal wth Yahoo! would provide Microsoft with “critical mass in the advertising marketplace.”

Some excerpts:

WSJ: Steve, should a Yahoo search deal come to pass with Microsoft, would Qi’s hiring make it easier for Microsoft to integrate whatever assets it acquired from Yahoo?

Mr. Ballmer: I think a search deal makes great sense for Microsoft, and Yahoo, and I think I’ve been very open about that. That’s as true with Qi joining us as it was before Qi joined us. Obviously the logistics of any such integration…can only be simpler by having somebody who will know both sides. But, that was not a factor in hiring Qi.

WSJ: Do you feel like you’re in a situation where you can go slow with regards to Yahoo and any conversations, or do you need to move quickly?

Mr. Ballmer: We’re fully prepared to compete without any partnership with Yahoo. We don’t need to act. Would it be advantageous for both of us to make a deal? Look, the fundamental basis for doing the search deal with Yahoo has to do with critical mass in the advertising marketplace. It doesn’t have to do with technology, or any of these other things, it really is a market phenomenon… We’d have higher monetization levels possible in front of us because there would be more people bidding on more key words. Most importantly, Google would have perhaps a real credible competitor sooner.

I think good ideas are usually better done quickly than slowly, so it would probably be better for both us, and certainly for Yahoo, if we were to do it sooner than later. But at the end of the day, that would have be something Yahoo would be as interested in as I have expressed our interest.”

Lu, who was appointed to his new post on Thursday said he was impressed by the amount of resources Microsoft was investing in its online business.

Microsoft today announced BizSpark, a global program designed to help accelerate the success of early stage software Startups. . BizSpark includes over 300 Network Partners who are incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies and hosters who are vested in software-fueled innovation and entrepreneurship and can offer the program directly to startups.

VentureBeat describes BizSpark: It’s an enticing free upfront three-year package, bundling together software, support and promotion for no upfront cost — requiring merely a $100 payment when you leave the program. It’s an aggressive move by Microsoft to ensure that technology startups at least consider using Microsoft’s tools when they are putting together their initial infrastructure — and comes a time when competitors are bidding for the business of those same startups by offering them low cost, often open source initiatives.

By joining BizSpark, Startups get:access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies, and unlimited production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. Startups will also get access to the community technology preview (CTP) of the Microsoft Azure Services Platform. A dedicated online startup directory, BizSparkDB, on the Microsoft  Startup Zone website (www.microsoftstartupzone.com) will highlight  promising companies from around the world, including the “BizSpark Startup of the Day”. Through their relationship with Microsoft and BizSpark Network Partners, startups will achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients and partners.

A new Live SearchPerks program announced today will reward users who install a small desktop counter to their PCs that calculates how many times they use Live Search. Running through April, the program awards users “tickets” for joining the program and for each search conducted per day (up to 25), putting them in the running to win such prizes as free music downloads, air miles, and video games.

Previous rewards programs Microsoft has run to boost their search numbers include Live Search Club, a somewhat maligned program that rewarded users for playing games using Live Search and the “cashback” feature introduced in May that rewarded users for using Live Search by offering rebates for products bought online.

This offers are not likely to be game changers in the search market, but it seems to be having short term benefits for Microsoft’s search business.