How do you win in the search engine wars? Two approaches suggest themselves: 1) build a better search engine or 2) bribe users. Microsoft is trying option two in hopes of gathering enough data to make option one a reality.
Microsoft sent out an e-mail to Hotmail users this week, asking them to participate in the “Live Search Trial Program.” The program rewards users with “tickets” every time they use Live Search to find something, which can then be redeemed for prizes later on. These prizes include everything from t-shirts to video games, and the promo will extend through February of next year.
The promotion isn’t just to bring in new users, but also to help Microsoft test things out and get feedback. The prizes will ultimately help the company improve the search experience, a Microsoft spokesperson told MarketWatch, which in turn will “improve our understanding of the types of searches users perform each day and the search engines they utilize.”
Microsoft revamped its Live Search in late September, quadrupling its index size. The company also made a number of tweaks to the the search engine’s query algorithms, results page, and the way it analyzes clickstream data. The changes were significant and welcome to regular users, but didn’t offer much that was innovative when compared to the competition. If anything, they brought Live Search more in line with features that were already offered by search giant Google.
The promotion suggests that Microsoft is still in search of a sizable user base from which to get feedback data. This is also not the first time Microsoft has tried such a promotion. When it launched a similar effort earlier this year, the company managed to increase its share of the search market to 13.3 percent, according to Nielsen numbers. It has since dipped again in recent months, however, and continues to place a distant third after Yahoo and Google.
Prizes may help in increasing small levels of market share, but Microsoft won’t be able to overtake the big dogs unless it launches something truly unique that will be able to set Live Search apart from the rest.
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Microsoft Corp. is unveiling a Web component for its desktop-based Office programs that lets computer users store, share and comment on documents, but the software maker did not go so far as to let people create new files from scratch online.
Microsoft Office Live Workspace, as the free Web site is called, isn’t quite live. Starting Monday, users can sign up to be part of an early “beta” test of the service. A number of those users will be able to start using the service at some point this year, Microsoft said.
Office Live Workspace will give users about 250 megabytes of storage, or room to keep about 1,000 average Office documents “in the cloud.” PC users can upload Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, and use the site to e-mail friends or colleagues and invite them to read and add comments to those documents through a Web browser.
However, if users want to edit the text, they must open the document using an installed copy of Microsoft Office.
Office Live Workspace taps into a few of Microsoft’s Web offerings. Users with Hotmail, Xbox Live and other Microsoft accounts can use that information to log on to Workspace. Once there, they can use their stored contact list to send invitations.
The service is compatible with Office 2003 and Office 2007, and users will be able to save from Office to the Web site and open files they’ve stored online.
Workspace wasn’t intended as a standalone program, said Chris Capossela, a corporate vice president in Microsoft’s business software division, but rather a “companion service.” At a media event last week, Capossela and Jeff Raikes, president of the division, stressed that users were most interested in using the power of the Web to access their documents from any computer, and for collaborating, and not for creating sophisticated documents.
Office Live Workspace is not to be confused with Office Live, a set of tools Microsoft first developed to help small businesses build Web sites and manage online advertising campaigns. Office Live will be renamed Office Live Small Business, Microsoft said.
The vast majority of computer users use Word, Excel and other Office programs, in spite of challenges from open source desktop programs like OpenOffice. Google Inc. and several small startups offer Web-based word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software, and recently, Google launched tools that even let its programs work offline.
While Microsoft is officially mum on whether it will add more useful features to an online version of Office, Capossela said the software maker plans to remain the leader in productivity software.
John Rymer, an analyst for Forrester Research, said that on its own, Workspace isn’t all that exciting, but it’s unlikely Microsoft will stop there.
“The payoff is going to come later, when you’ve got editing, real collaboration … when it’s really Office reconstituted,” he said. “That’s not going to come for a while.”
After experimenting online in areas far from Microsoft’s core business software products, the software maker’s first step is, in part, meant to prove it is serious about offering software online, Rymer said.
Microsoft also announced Monday it will sell its Exchange, SharePoint and Communications server software as services over the Internet. That means that information technology departments at companies with more than 5,000 PC users won’t have to buy disks, install software and manage the server computers. Instead, Microsoft will host the software on servers in its own data centers and sell access to companies on a subscription basis.
The software maker did not disclose any pricing details.
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