Watch Out for Microsoft

Microsoft is hitting the web services arena full force and (you heard it here first) it's going to lessen Y & G's hold on the 'Net community - website owners included. The MSN AdCenter and its new Windows Live Search Engine (both of which I've tested) are impressive to say the least.

The MSN AdCenter takes the best of both Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing and combines them into an online advertisers dream platform (if they can serve up the traffic). The management console is simple, provides tracking and allows dayparting. But more on the AdCenter in a future post.

Now, about the Windows Live Search Engine which was officially released in Beta today. The "smart" part of the product is its ability to work in tandem with the Windows operating system and Office business software. Essentially, the product will continue to be tested but will eventually replace the search functionality that powers MSN.com.

Here are some of the features of the new Windows Live Search engine:

- Tabbed Web browsing (possibly ala Mozilla)
- A "Search Slider" bar that offers previews of data in various forms
- Smart scroll which features, get this, ALL search results on one page instead of multiple pages.
- "Save Search" feature

There were some problems just now when I tried to access the site which reveals (like most things in life) that execution is of paramount importance.

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