With Live Search, Microsoft aims to advance on a market dominated by Yahoo and Google. According to statistics provided by Internet researcher Nielsen/NetRatings, Microsoft's search engine ranks third on the market lagging behind Yahoo and Google. Evolving the engine from the MSN search under the Live brand umbrella, Microsoft intends to increase its web search share as it was down to 9.6% in July compared to 11% in January 2006. "I feel confident that we can gain share," commented Derrick Connell, general manager of Microsoft's Search Business Unit.

"The launch of Live Search is a significant milestone for our services business, with our core search and monetization platform ready for prime time for MSN and Windows Live as well as for partners through syndication deals," explained Christopher Payne, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Live Search. "We now have the base to weave search through our services in ways that bring value to customers. This is just the beginning. We look forward to continued investment in search to deliver services that bring new levels of control and personalization to the Web experience."

Fresh out of beta, Live Search delivers traditional search complemented by Images, News and Local query features. Additionally, the search engine provides users with the possibility of tapping resources associated with services that are still in beta phase, including QnA, Video, Academic and Feeds search.

Live Search is not without its shortcomings, as it returned only 78,831,753 results to the "Paris" query while Yahoo found 371,000,000 and Google identified 971,000,000 results.