Microsoft's Windows 7 made for touch-screen,  cedes book scanning and search to Google

www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-29 15:47:16  

    BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhuanet) -- 

Microsoft Corp.'s top executives on Tuesday reaffirmed interest in hooking up with Yahoo Inc. and said at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference that its next operating system will be made for touch-screen applications.

    Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer called the touch-screen feature "just the smallest snippet" of the Windows 7 operating system slated for release in late 2009.

    A Microsoft employee showed possible applications like enlarging and shrinking photos and navigating a map of San Diego, California, by stroking the screen.

    Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates framed the new feature as an evolution away from the mouse.

    "Today almost all the interaction is keyboard-mouse," Gates said. "Over years to come, the role of speech, vision, ink — all of those — will be huge."

    The software company's top two executives defended its last operating system, Vista, while acknowledging missteps. Gates said he has never been 100 percent satisfied with any Microsoft product, and that the company prides itself on fixing shortcomings in later versions.

    Ballmer said Microsoft remained in discussions to team up with Yahoo Inc. after Microsoft's 47.5 billion U.S. dollar bid for the company was spurned earlier this month. He said Microsoft wasn't planning to buy Yahoo but offered only the barest details of what he has in mind.

    "We are not rebidding for the company. We reserve the right to do so. That's not on the docket," he said. "All I'll say is we're in ongoing discussions with them around a partnership."

    (Agencies)

Editor: Gareth Dodd

Microsoft cedes book scanning and search to Google

www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-24 14:05:21  

    BEIJING, May 24 --

Microsoft Corp. is abandoning its effort to scan whole libraries and make their contents searchable, a sign it may be getting choosier about the fights it will pick with Google Inc.

    The world's largest software maker is under pressure to show it has a coherent strategy for turning around its unprofitable online business after its bid for Yahoo Inc., last valued at US$47.5 billion, collapsed this month.

    Digitizing books and archiving academic journals no longer fits with the company's plan for its search operation, wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search and advertising group, in a blog post yesterday.

    Microsoft will take down two separate sites for searching the contents of books and academic journals next week, and Live Search will direct Web surfers looking for books to non-Microsoft sites, the company said.

    Nadella said Microsoft will focus on "verticals with high commercial intent."

    "We believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner," Nadella wrote.

    At an advertising confab at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters this week, he demonstrated a new system that rewards customers with cash rebates for using Live Search to find and buy items on advertisers' sites.

    Microsoft entered the book-scanning business in 2005 by contributing material to the Open Content Alliance, an industry group conceived by the Internet Archive and Yahoo. In 2006, it unveiled its competing MSN book search site.

    Unlike Google, whose decision to scan books still protected under copyright law has provoked multiple lawsuits, Microsoft stuck to scanning books with the permission of publishers or that were firmly in the public domain.

    The company said it will give publishers digital copies of the 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles it has amassed.    

    Microsoft's search engine is a distant third behind Google's and Yahoo's, in terms of the number of queries performed each month, despite the company's many attempts to emulate Google's innovative search features and create some of its own.

    Microsoft as much as said its search strategy wasn't working when it offered in February to buy Yahoo to boost its search and advertising. Talks between the companies collapsed because Yahoo executives sought more money.

    The company's ceding the book-search segment to Google and the Yahoo-led Open Content Alliance could signal Microsoft has a new search strategy and is ready to jettison its unsuccessful me-too efforts.

    However, the software maker has not given up on combining its search operations with Yahoo's. The two companies are said to be talking about a more limited deal.

    (Source: Shanghai Daily/Agencies)

Editor: Song Shutao