History and Future of Live Search and Bing

When you visit www.live.com these days, you get a notification banner within the Bing homepage:

MSN.com has been a prominent “portico” to Microsoft’s renowned services to the end-user, while Live.com initially redirected to Windows Live Services’ “showroom” (http://ideas.live.com/). Then, when Windows Live Search took off, Live.com became the devoted home of Live Search, which was eventually cancelled due to decline in popularity and usage. As a result of Live.com being solely committed to Windows Live Search, Microsoft prepared a new location for its showroom, available at http://home.live.com/.

As part of Microsoft’s competition with Google, Microsoft made way for a personalisation page, much like iGoogle. However, due to the deprived advertising campaign and the little demand for a “replica” of Google, Live Search eventually declined. Yet, Microsoft did not give up on its Search service, thus, started all over by rebranding Live Search to Bing and working harder on advertising campaign and development of unique features. Therefore, to further publicise Bing, Microsoft decided to redirect Live.com to Bing’s website (www.bing.com). However, later announced that Live.com will be put to good use, perhaps something better than redirecting to another website, yet unfortunately, it is unclear what “good use” will it be put to.

• Will it offer the Windows Live services that Home.Live.com currently offers on its page?
• Or will it offer a new personalized space for Windows Live users?
• What will we see at www.live.com in the future?