The Gorilla Enters the Jungle

Google, Eurekster, and pretty much everyone in the SNS space needs to start looking over their shoulder from this point forward. Although it was anticipated that the larger players would eventually enter the space, this is finally confirmation. As News.com reports:

peaking at the company's annual online advertising conference, Yusuf Medhi, MSN's corporate vice president of information and merchant services, spoke about the company's "big investment" in search. He highlighted MSN's recent release of a search toolbar for the browser and its new News Search, which aims to deliver more relevant results using personalization.

In addition, he flagged planned Web log and social-networking products, and said the Microsoft division plans to develop natural language-processing algorithms. This technology would permit visitors to ask questions such as "What's the highest mountain?" instead of using simple keywords.

Source: News.com, "Microsoft's aggressive search plans revealed"