Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has quietly launched a news aggregator Web site that incorporates  both top national and international news stories along with local news in a format that also prominently features video news clips, with a new service called Live Search News. The news service, which became available Tuesday, presents headlines and short excerpts from numerous online news sources such as MSNBC, USA Today and CNN and gathers, or aggregates, them into an easily searchable format, and has entered a market already rich with choices from other news aggregators, led by Internet giant Google. Enters News Aggregator Market Led By Google Tuesday's unannounced Live Search News launch was Microsoft's latest and most ambitious foray into the online news market, and came as part of the company's ongoing effort to upgrade its Live Search platform. Microsoft had a personalized news aggregator called MSN Newsbot as early as 2003, a service that was later integrated into the software maker's main search service. Microsoft Live Search News, which can be accessed using either its news.live.com or search.live.com/news Web address, presents an uncategorized display of some ten assorted top news stories by default, and allows users to click on tabs to choose from nine additional categories such as international, sports and entertainment news, each displaying ten news items, a number that can optionally be increased to show up to 50 items in each category. A Sleek And Simplified Look The Live Search News main page presents some eight local news items in a section on the right, taken from  available news sources near a site visitor's location, estimated using a process that analyzes the user's Internet protocol (IP) address. Options allow users to manually change their location, which may be useful for travelers wishing to keep track of news in their hometown while on the road. Five news videos are also shown on Live Search News, which begin to play as soon as a user moves the mouse pointer over them and which can be clicked to visit the Web sites where the video clips originated, a preview technology Microsoft debuted with its video search function within Live Search. Microsoft Launches Live Search News Aggregator Site A test of the new Live Search News for news about the Tuesday "Congo plane crash" resulted in a list of 111 news items, while the same search using the Google News aggregator produced 536 results. The first news item presented with Live Search News came from Microsoft's own MSNBC network, while the top item presented in Google News came from news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). Microsoft has not disclosed whether the number of news sources Live Search News uses will be similar to the 4,500 or so used by Google News. The new Live Search News aggregator displays the most important breaking news stories in a bright orange section as needed, and offers suggested related searches when looking for specific news. Live Search News looks for the most relevant news items by default, and offers an optional date-based list of news results. While the version of Live Search News launched Tuesday lacks standard Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed delivery and is presently not fully available in the United Kingdom, it is expected Microsoft will implement additional features and bring the release to all its customers in forthcoming updates. Related Links:
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9:41 pm on April 16, 2008 (utc 0)
