14 DAY TRIAL // Live Search is a Microsoft offering debuted under the Windows Live brand umbrella and meant to be an alternative to MSN Search, although the two search engines ended up being complementary, joined at the hip by the audience both as brands and functionality. Still, the Redmond company's efforts for driving its share of the search engine mart up are consistently focused on Live Search. This is partly because Live Search, as a fragment of the Windows Live cloud operating system puzzle is also evolving towards integration with the Windows client platform, in Microsoft's Software plus Services business approach.
But the Redmond company is by no means targeting its own desktop operating system as the sole platform for growing Windows Live. The fact of the matter is that from the perspective of a cloud operating system, Windows Live has the potential to be platform agnostic. Microsoft indicated strong signs of implementing Windows Live across various platforms, and especially on mobile devices starting at the beginning of 2007 with the availability of Live Search for Windows Mobile 6 and Live Search for Java. The past month Microsoft and Nokia inked an agreement designed to deliver Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Spaces to Nokia Series 40 handsets. Live Search for Mobile has already been included into the Nokia Mobile Search application.
The Redmond company is not getting ready to make yet another step towards becoming a defining presence in the mobile lifestyle with an agreement with the U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel. The new partnership will leverage the voice recognition technology acquired by Microsoft from Tellme Networks for approximately $800 million. Essentially, users of Sprint phones will be able to perform voice location-aware mobile searches. "The location based and voice technologies we're delivering today with Sprint are a first in the US mobile industry," stated Brian Arbogast, VP of Mobile Services, as cited by LiveSide.