Microsoft said it will soon offer a better, faster, more curious search engine.
A beta version of the search engine debuts at Live.com in a few hours. It, and a revision in a few months, will be a serious challenge to market leader Google Inc., said MSN Search Senior Product Manager Justin Osmer.
The new beta version of the engine features MSN’s own picture and video search technology. Microsoft had been using technology from Picsearch, a third-party company, to do the dirty work in this regard. Picsearch’s technology will now only be found on MSN.com, Microsoft’s popular portal which Live.com is meant to ultimately replace.
“To say we’ll get to overall number one in a few months is a bit bold,” Osmer said. “But, maybe we’ll be number one in some market metrics.” He mentioned local search and relevancy, which is a measure of the sharpness of a search engine’s results.