MSN's Search Engine Is Back

Microsoft's MSN search engine had some unspecified technical difficulties yesterday, as any attempt to search after a keyword returned the famous 404 error: The service is temporarily unavailable.

According to the AP, the search engine stopped working around 8:30 a.m. PDT and was back online at 12:15 p.m. PDT.

Currently, the two search services operated by Redmond giant, Live and MSN, are working in parallel, and so, the question is, why didn't Microsoft provide a link on MSN to redirect the searches to Live during the four hours of unavailability?

According to some Nielsen/NetRatings February statistics, MSN's market share is somewhere around 10.7 percent, which is almost half of Yahoo's and a quarter of Google's, 48.5 percent.

WebProNews hypothesizes that the reason behind MSN's problem was the contest the company has been holding since February. Users who search after certain keywords could receive numerous prizes, including plasma HDTVs.