Moreover to Power MSN Newsbot

[Brittany]

The world’s most popular Internet destination is trying to gain a stronger foothold overseas. In an effort to compete with Google’s continuously expanding influence (http://webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=13810) Microsoft’s MSN is now offering its Newsbot beta in additional foreign languages.

Newsbot, which was launched back in November, is a news search tool that provides localized news in a variety of languages across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The service has been expanded to include five new regions: Latin America, India, South Africa, Malaysia, and Singapore.

On Wednesday, Moreover Technologies, a leading provider of critical news and business information, announced that it will be working exclusively with MSN to power the Newsbot beta and other international applications such as My MSN.

“We are delighted that MSN has chosen Moreover Technologies as its provider of aggregated current awareness and business information,” said Jim Pitkow, CEO of Moreover Technologies. “This relationship is a further validation of Moreover Technologies’ best-of-breed service.”

MSN has chosen a risky time to test the search engine waters. Research conducted by ComScore Media Metrix indicates that web surfers are less than loyal to their preferred search engines and that only about 30 percent of searchers use MSN. Do you think MSN will be able to succeed?

[ldyguique]

A couple of things come to mind quickly (with my first cup of morning coffee). Thirty percent marketshare is huge. It's not top dog, but it's very respectable (especially, considering that google was at about 70% in December).

MSN is default on every single new install of windows, returns one to MSN as default when upgrading to IE6, and plus powers their own ISP portal.

The primary reason that it's not higher than 30% right now is due to various partnership agreements from other ISPs who have their own software installed or portal homepages that have partnered with google. Plus, I think it suffers from a certain amount of MS-monopoly backlash.

I truly do not believe that 90% of the users are savvy enough to change their search engine of choice on their own. Most XP users that I've dealt with have never used the search function of XP, which is the place where one can alter the default SE choice. If the average user gets back 100s of hits, they are fairly clueless that there might have been better returns on some other search engine or with other keyword choices.

And, if MSN/MS wants to maintain marketshare and even grow it, it has no choice but to become as versatile and useful as google or yahoo. I know that I continue to use google FOR its news more than any other single search task as I've switched over to vivisimo because I get better pinpointed results, especially for preliminary and narrowing searches. But, I'm in a small group.

Google was holding at approximately 70% share due to a combination of things -- a major component was due to other SEs being powered by it. With Yahoo pulling out, that share must drop.

[minstrel]

MSN is default on every single new install of windows, returns one to MSN as default when upgrading to IE6, and plus powers their own ISP portal...

Google was holding at approximately 70% share due to a combination of things -- a major component was due to other SEs being powered by it. With Yahoo pulling out, that share must drop.
Your logic seems odd to me here... Google has enjoyed a huge market without being the default SE on Windows or Internet Explorer installations or even being a listed option, if memory serves. Thus, the people using Google were doing so because of the name, reputation, and results produce by Google. Moreover, the term "share" is defined as people using Google - not people using Yahoo or other engines "powered by" Google, where in that case they would add to the statistic for Yahoo or the other SE.

Certainly, the fact that Yahoo and perhaps other engines are strengthening what they offer in competition might be expected in time to reduce Google's "market share" but it seems to me that the mere fact of Yahoo (or anyone else) not relying on Google data won't do that automatically.