MSN Search Launched

[Paul K]

It's out of BETA and officially launched.
http://search.msn.co.uk

MSN Search Launches
I am proud and excited to announce that MSN Search is now officially launched.
With this final push we have made more than 40,000 Encarta encyclopedia articles and associated media available for free to MSN Search users, which translates to more than 1.5 million Instant Answers. We also improved and integrated Newsbot, added a button for RSS feeds on the bottom of all applicable search results pages, and increased our MSN Music selection.
We have been doing a ton behind the scenes over the last few weeks as well, tuning performance and working on scaling the system to handle MSNââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s volume.
In conjunction with all this, MSN has launched a redesigned MSN.com homepage.* The page is streamlined, over 50% faster and showcases the new search functionality.* This will give users a great place to start their search experience.* Furthermore weâ₠¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢ve added the ability to access MSN Search from the Microsoft.com homepage.
What is most exciting to me is we now have a search platform in place that we can innovate on top of at a rapid pace. Thanks to all of you who provided feedback during the beta and tech previews - Keep it coming. The next year is going to be extremely exciting.
Thanks

Christopher Payne
Corporate VP, MSN Search

Did a search but it disregarded the MSN at the front so if it's been posted already I apologise There's also talk of an updated desktop search tool http://beta.toolbar.msn.com/ being ready to download.

[Halcyon]

Oh right thats cool if it lets you read Encarta articles too.

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Oh right thats cool if it lets you read Encarta articles too.

Probably something they will concentrate on when pushing the service as it is one of the few things that they can say is specific to their search engine

[AndrewJ]

And rather funny will stop it doing it because of it costing them money, due to no-one buying the disk lol.

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by AndrewJames

And rather funny will stop it doing it because of it costing them money, due to no-one buying the disk lol.

They have only listed 40,000 encarta references so people won't get away with just questioning MSN search until they have all the information that the Encarta software holds
Makes you wonder what will happen to http://encarta.msn.com/ though