“Microsoft announced a renewed version of live news search service this week that brings together stories, photos and video from around the world.”
Microsoft clearly has not given up in its effort to improve its Internet search service and catch the runaway leader, Google, and its latest assault on everyone’s favorite data warehouse, Microsoft is tossing a fresh offering onto the scene in the form of Live Search News.
Although it is not Microsoft’s first venture into news aggregation services – the company in the past ran the Microsoft Network Newsbot. But at present, Live Search News looks like a simplified version of Google News. The layout and design are aesthetically pleasing and will be familiar to Techmeme readers.
Much like Google News, Live Search News delivers stories from a variety of different sources. Unlike Google News, the stories are not separated into topic sections by default, although there are navigation tabs, and a handful of videos get prominent placement.
The orange breaking-news block on the upside is a nicely designed feature of the site and only appears when big news is happening. The breaking-news information, unfortunately, appears only to be provided by MSNBC and not automatically generated by trends.
Live Search News also allows you to filter news results supported by categories that are relevant to the story you are viewing. To access this functionality, just click “More on this story” for any article and you will see relevant stories, along with these filters.
Microsoft is proposing to release major updates to its Live Search offerings twice a year, in spring and fall. Live Search News is part of the spring update, which also included a traffic-tracking feature for Live Maps.
“News is another one of those areas where there is a lot of searches,” said Justin Osmer, a senior product manager. “And we have had a news category or a news vertical for a while, but to be honest, had not put a lot of effort to it.”
Microsoft has said it is focuses on bettering Live Search in specific topic and content areas that attract a lot of interest, such as shopping and entertainment.
Google News gathers stories from “more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide,” according to its Web site.
As with other forms of Internet search, the news aggregation services will make money by displaying relevant advertising next to the search results. Live Search News does not currently carry advertising, but it could in the future, Osmer said.