The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Microsoft's latest offering helpful to Net users

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 23, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Microsoft's latest offering helpful to Net users

By Rasheed Kappan

BANGALORE, FEB. 22. The next time you have a query such as "what is seven times 20" or "how high is Mt. Everest" or a complex arithmetic or algebra calculation, simply type the question in the window of MSN Search, Microsoft's latest innovation. A one-line answer would appear in microseconds on the web page, along with the other MSN search results.

"How many inches in a mile?" Launched last fortnight in the country, this feature of MSN Search draws its results from the database of 1.5 million answers provided by Microsoft Encarta, the leading encyclopaedia brand. You could ask any question on geographical locations, historical and popular figures, definitions, facts, calculations, conversions, and solutions to equations.

Till now, Internet browsers had to type out the key words in the search window and click on the search results to look out for precise definitions.

But the one-line Encarta answer is only part of the long list of features offered by the new MSN Search, built from the ground up by Microsoft in about 16 months. Now available in 25 countries and 10 languages, the search service offers a collection of tools to Net users, giving them greater control in targeting and refining searches to get instant, accurate answers to specific questions.

Hitherto based on the Yahoo company Inktomy, MSN Search chose to build its own advanced search engine to tide over problems of dead links, user frustration over formulating complex search queries and web databases which were not updated, MSN India's programming head, Krishna Prasad, told The Hindu here.

Option disabled

Indian parents worried about explicit adult images popping up on the screen and spoiling their children could relax. The Indian site of MSN Search has completely disabled the option to search for adult text and images. "MSN uses a combination of software and human editors to make search completely child-friendly," said Krishna Prasad, Head of Programming, MSN India.

Another feature of the new search service is the "Search Builder". This tool allows people to extensively customise searches by emphasising or deemphasising certain search criteria — such as specific site or domain, country or region, or language — via a menu of adjustable on-screen dials. Besides, Net users can do category-specific searching helping them to extensively fine tune results using category-specific tabs such as Web, news, images and Encarta.

The new MSN Search is available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States besides India.

According to a recent survey, about 12.5 million of the estimated 25 million Indian Internet users visit the MSN India site at least once a month either for email (over 50 per cent), messenger (over 40 per cent), news (32 per cent), or search (38 per cent). Worldwide, the MSN sites attract over 360 million unique users per month.

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