World News 04-02-2005 who: Microsoft what: Launches its own web search engine when: Tuesday snippet: "MSN Search`s boast, that it `aims to have an answer to every query`, falls short of the mark," reckons The Telegraph. "On key questions provided by Microsoft`s press office the new search engine was quick and efficient. But when faced with more obscure queries - the sort that primary school children tend to ask while doing homework - it was consistently less helpful than Google." Meanwhile, Google announced a huge rise in profits and its share price grew accordingly. In more parochial search engine news, The Sun says Yell.com (that`s Yellow Pages to the rest of us) has been programmed to recognise regional dialect words like "cludgie (toilet in Scotland), stotty (bread in Newcastle), laithe (barn in Yorkshire) and sough (drains in Lancashire)". And in other technology news, The Guardian says Napster aims to "change the music industry forever" with its new portable subscription service and the BBC reckons Microsoft might unveil Xbox2 - codenamed Xenon - in May. [... more]

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