Microsoft

Microsoft's feisty little search service, Bing, has finally made an iPhone app, which is now up on the Apple iTunes app store.

Bing showed off the free app at a party thrown by its mobile team in San Francisco on Tuesday night. Information about the new app is also now on Microsoft's Bing blog here.

Its description on the iTunes store says: "Make decisions and get where you need to go with Bing. See the Bing daily image and related trivia on the home screen. Search maps or the Web with your voice--even say an address. Use Image Search and flick through previews. Download Bing today to find stuff nearby and get there fast."

A Bing PR e-mail noted the key features of the app include: Daily image from Bing.com; easy to access voice search; tips and tricks on the home page; "Locate Me" functionality; ability to add pushpins and save locations; show multiple locations on a single map.

It's a sweet little irony, since Microsoft and Apple have been frenemies over the years.

But bowing to the power of the iPhone as the premiere smartphone out there, Bing has to be on its platform, if it wants to compete with Google and others in the mobile arena.

Microsoft already has some apps for the iPhone, such as for its Seadragon photo app, a Tag Reader app and various manual apps.

And, while others have made apps that allow its popular software to work on the Apple device, Microsoft has yet to release one, although sources said the company is working on them.

Microsoft has already made Bing apps for Windows phones, the BlackBerry from Research in Motion, the Sidekick and select BREW-based devices on Verizon, as well as Bing mobile from a browser.

Company execs recently showed off a spate of innovations for Bing, including new mobile features, but not in an iPhone app.

But, no matter how you look at it, the iPhone app is the big time.

Here are more screenshots of the app:

Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is the latest Silicon Valley CEO to draw ire after suggesting that folks seeking privacy might not want to look to the Internet to find it.

"I think judgment matters," Schmidt said, appearing on CNBC (see video below). "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines--including Google--do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

In some senses, Schmidt was merely stating the truth about the U.S. law as it currently stands. However his "maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" comments, in particular, seem to have raised the hackles of privacy advocates and others.

Among the most interesting reactions was a posting on a Mozilla veteran's personal Web page suggesting that users might want to switch to Bing because of its better privacy policy.

"That was Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, telling you exactly what he thinks about your privacy," Mozilla Director of Community Development Asa Dotzler said on his personal blog, referring to the CNBC comments. "There is no ambiguity, no 'out of context' here. Watch the video."

From there, Dotzler shows how one can easily switch Firefox's search engine from Google to Bing, adding, "Yes, Bing does have a better privacy policy than Google."

To be fair, that Patriot Act and other laws apply just as much to Microsoft as it does to Google. Still, I think Dotzler's posting raises some interesting issues. Plus, it's particularly noteworthy that a Mozilla worker is willing to raise the issue given how the lion's share of Mozilla's revenue comes from the Google traffic generated from Mozilla's search bar.

The difference, in my opinion, isn't that Microsoft is somehow subject to different laws than Google, or even that it would behave differently in the face of a government challenge (both companies kowtow in China, for example). Rather, the two companies seem to have a different approach toward privacy issues.

Google's attitude tends to focus on the great benefits that open information can, and often does have. Plus, of course, its stance is an outgrowth of the fact that Google has built its business around gaining revenue by doing the best job of organizing that information.

That shows up in all kinds of ways. Mozilla Developer Relations Director Christopher Blizzard noted in a Twitter posting that sites users visit in Chrome get sent to Google.

"Everyone knows that every site you visit and all address bar searches in Chrome go to Google, right?" Blizzard wrote. (I sent an e-mail to Mozilla seeking its corporate take on things, but did not immediately get a response.)

Microsoft's approach, meanwhile, stems no less from its economic interest, but its zeal is tempered by years of heavy regulation and consumer backlash.

These differences in attitudes, and shifting tides in the center of power in the tech industry, I expect to be major issues in the coming years as regulators and consumers decide where to place their attention.

That said, Schmidt is hardly the first to point out that the idea of privacy on the Internet might be outmoded. "You already have zero privacy. Get over it," former Sun CEO Scott McNealy famously intoned, drawing many of the same criticisms.

Obviously, privacy advocates argue that protections must extend to the Internet. In a blog posting, security expert Bruce Schneier makes a passionate argument, although I think it is interesting that he digs up an essay from 2006 to make his reply.

"Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance," Schneier wrote. "We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need."

So what do you think? Is privacy a basic human need, or a quaint, outdated notion, or is it, paradoxically, both of those things?

Navteq announced a partnership Monday under which it will supply 3D map data for Microsoft's newly expanded mapping online services.

Last week, Microsoft took its first steps building 3D imagery into Bing Maps with data from about 100 cities to start with in the Streetside feature that gives a driver's-eye view of the world. But slogging down innumerable streets the world over is an arduous process--Google has been doing it for years with Street View and still has a ways to go to add its first data, not to mention the challenge of keeping views up to date.

Microsoft says a change that was being tested was inadvertently moved onto the live Bing.com site, causing a half-hour outage on Thursday.

(Credit: CNET)

Microsoft said that a configuration change that was mistakenly moved from testing onto the live Bing.com site was to blame for an outage Thursday that left Microsoft's search engine completely inaccessible for more than half an hour.

A Microsoft representative told CNET on Friday that the problem appears to have come when something being tested was moved onto the live site.

"A configuration change was mistakenly propagated to production from staging," the representative said. "It was supposed to stay in the test environment--it was a mistake."

In a blog posting that went up late on Thursday night, Microsoft Senior Vice President Satya Nadella said that a change made during testing had "unfortunate and unintended consequences."

"As soon as the issue was detected, the change was rolled back, which caused the site to return to normal behavior," Nadella said. "Unfortunately the detection and rollback took about half an hour, and during that time users were unable to use bing.com."

And here I thought Microsoft was just trying to be energy efficient by running Bing only 23 hours a day.

Nadella said that Microsoft is exploring what went wrong to make sure it doesn't happen again. The outage came just a day after Microsoft announced a variety of changes to Bing, including added detail for some results and improved mapping tricks.

SAN FRANCISCO--Although Microsoft would rather everyone ran out and bought a Windows Mobile phone, the software maker is aware of reality. And, since it wants people to use Bing on their phones, it knows it needs to have software that works on other devices.

"Everyone understands the popularity and the pervasiveness of the platform," said Microsoft principal group program manager David Raissipour, following a Bing event Wednesday. "We are actively working on it."

Raissipour confirmed Microsoft is working on a mobile Bing application that will combine a number of features--more than just mapping and search. However, he declined to say what all of those features are or when the software will be ready.

I probed as to whether some of the cool mapping technology Microsoft showed on Wednesday might make it onto phones. Raissipour said such mapping requires a rich platform, but could potentially be done without Silverlight, if necessary. So, what about the iPhone?

"It's certainly possible," Raissipour said. "That's a rich platform."

Microsoft already has native mobile applications for many Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerry devices, and a number of Verizon feature phones. The company is also exploring what it might be able to do on Android, particularly on non-Google branded Android devices. In the meantime, the company has its mobile m.bing.com Web site.

I also had a chance to catch up with overall search engineering chief Satya Nadella to ask some overall Bing questions.

In particular, I wanted to see just how many people are actively choosing to go to Bing.com, as opposed to just searching via MSN or a browser tool bar. With Bing's predecessor, Live Search, very few people actually went to the Live.com page.

"It's still a small percentage," Nadella said, but noted that it has succeeded in getting a fan base, which was a key early goal of the product.

When it comes to the data that Microsoft is including at the top of some search results, in general, Nadella said Microsoft is not paying for the content, nor are companies paying to get their information included.

The benefit to Microsoft is that it displays more useful results while content providers get a link high up in the results page. "It's kind of like SEO [Search Engine Optimization] for structured data," Nadella said. As for those new mapping abilities, I encourage you to check them out for yourself and read . In addition, though, here's a video I did with Microsoft's Blaise Aguera y Arcas, where he walks through the new features.

Microsoft's new street-level imagery in Bing Maps takes advantage of Silverlight to do things Web applications can't, according to the company.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)

Microsoft is kicking Bing Maps into a higher gear, announcing a beta version of Bing Maps that uses Silverlight to display 3D images and its own version of street-level images.

The company announced the new beta Wednesday amid a discussion of other improvements to Bing Thursday at its San Francisco offices in a presentation for the media. Bing Maps Beta is rolling out Thursday along with several other new features in the main Bing search results.

Bing Maps Beta requires Microsoft Silverlight to deliver very smooth three-dimensional transitions between satellite and street-view imagery. Like Google Street View, Microsoft has driven the streets of major cities such as San Francisco and assembled its own library of map-related images.

The new beta service can also find images of items inside popular destinations, such as art exhibits inside museums and other geotagged images available on the Internet through Microsoft Photosynth. Developers can also create Web applications to run inside the Bing Maps Beta, such as an application that works with Newseum to index local papers inside maps and let Bing users see the front pages of newspapers across the country.

In addition, Bing Maps Beta users will be able to see local tweets through a partnership with Twitter demonstrated during the event. Twitter recently rolled out a geolocation service.

Updated 11:29 a.m. PST: Microsoft has street-level imagery for around 100 U.S. cities, it said, and is adding more imagery on a constant basis.

Updated 12:28 p.m. PST: Microsoft also talked about new enhancements to Bing called "entity cards," which are sections on the top of a search results page that contain a mix of structured and crawled data on a given topic. For example, searching on "Coldplay" will bring up an official photo of the band with a link to their Web page, tour dates, additional photos, and other information all displayed before your eyes scroll down to the search results themselves.

Similar enhancements will appear on searches for specific cities, with photos and weather information, as well as searches for companies, where financial information and news will appear. At some point in the future, Microsoft also plans to let searches hook up with their Facebook accounts to search for photos, upcoming birthdays, and status updates.

It is always fun when serious people offer a confessional.

On Microsoft's Bing blog, director Stefan Weitz decides to tell everyone who will listen that he has been an "avid rocket launcher since 1975."

I am not aware what effect this might have had on his parents, his neighbors, or the local police and fire services as he was growing up, but I can find no evidence that he was ever arrested for such avid launching.

Weitz is now, however, vexed that science is not cool in school.

So he and his friends at the Bingdome have decided to revive child enthusiasm for launching.

Please welcome Mission: 10,000 Rockets, a program designed to get your kids to design rockets that will successfully immolate beyond ashes several countries of which we have not become fond.

No, wait. I haven't got that quite right.

Perhaps something like this will be useful for a trip to the planet Titan?

(Credit: CC Erik Charlton/Flickr)

Mission: 10000 Rockets is, in fact, asking kids to imagine what the next generation of space travel might look like. If you can get your kids to walk away from their Grand Theft Auto and design the rockets of the future, they might get their creations actually built.

No, not to full size, but at least they will be brought to physical being by some "cool artists" whose work might just be worth a fortune one day.

A book of all the designs will also be produced, all the proceeds from which will be returned to schools. And eight extremely fortunate schools will receive $5,000 to fund scientific projects in their cash-strapped establishments.

As a recent job advertisement for an astronaut in the Calgary edition of Craigslist proved, there is a renewed enthusiasm in the space project, some of it no doubt engendered by the very real prospect that our own world will shortly disintegrate.

So what better way to make your children productive this weekend than by getting them to design a spacecraft that might, one day, preserve a little humanity for the residents of the Planet Titan to marvel at?

Microsoft's new Bing search service is the fastest-growing U.S. search engine among the top 10, according to a Nielsen report released Monday.

The total amount of searches on Bing rang in at 1.1 billion for the month of August, a leap of 22.1 percent over July, winning Microsoft a 10.7 percent share of the search engine market.

Google remained in the top spot with a commanding 64.6 percent share, accounting for 7 billion searches in August, a gain of 2.6 percent over July. Yahoo saw its search results drop 4.2 percent for the month to 1.7 billion, earning it 16 percent of the market.

(Credit: Nielsen)

Other players in the top 10 included AOL Search in fourth place with 333 million searches and Ask.com Search in fifth with 186 million searches.

Similar studies have also seen a boost in Microsoft's search business. An August report from ComScore discovered that Microsoft's share of the global search engine market lept 41 percent from July 2008 to July 2009. Bing was introduced in May, taking the place of Microsoft's Live Search.

Earlier this week, Microsoft showed off a "visual search" feature for Bing that returns thumbnail images for at least some search results. Microsoft reportedly will be debuting a Bing 2.0 sometime soon sporting a variety of new features.

The U.S. Department of Justice has furthered its investigation into the proposed search engine deal between Microsoft and Yahoo by asking both companies to provide more information.

The two companies received an additional request for information earlier this week as expected, Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans told CNET News. He said he couldn't reveal the specifics of the request, citing it as a confidential inquiry from the Justice Department. But he said Microsoft is in the process of providing the requested information.

Yahoo spokesman Adam Grossberg also confirmed to CNET News the Justice Department's request. He couldn't comment on the specifics either but added that Yahoo is cooperating fully.

"We confidently believe the information we'll provide will confirm that the deal is not only good for Yahoo and Microsoft, but also good for advertisers, publishers, and, ultimately, consumers," said Grossberg.

The request for additional information doesn't come as a surprise to either Microsoft or Yahoo.

Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, mergers or other business deals that meet certain requirements must be reviewed by the government before they can close. Companies have to file the necessary paperwork with the government and then wait 30 days before given clearance to move forward. In some cases, the government requests additional information before making a decision.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo were anticipating a close review of the deal given its scope, said Evans. At a press conference when the deal was announced, the companies said the review would be a matter of months, not weeks, taking it through the fall.

Despite the Justice Department's request for more details, both Microsoft and Yahoo are hopeful the deal will close as expected in early 2010.

Still, the Justice Department is only one battle. The agreement may also require regulatory clearance by the European Commission, which has been tough in its current probe of Oracle-Sun and in past probes of both Intel and Microsoft. Microsoft is currently trying to determine what formal notification, if any, needs to occur in Europe.

But a Microsoft-Yahoo search combination may be seen as less of a competitive threat in Europe where Google enjoys a 90 percent share of the search engine market versus its U.S. share, which ranges anywhere from 63 percent to 72 percent based on recent estimates.

Yahoo and Microsoft announced the deal in July, under which Bing's search engine technology would power Yahoo Search, and Yahoo would sell ad space next to search results, with the two companies splitting the sales.