A new offering called Windows Live Essentials, currently in beta, will provide a central location for downloading and managing multiple Windows Live clients and services and could help Microsoft counter bundling deals between OEMs and other online service providers, particularly Google. Separately, Microsoft's Internet search site shed its beta designation and got a name change but remains fundamentally unchanged.

Windows Live Essentials

Windows Live Essentials, which started a public beta test in Sept. 2006, is a Web site that lets users download Windows Live software. The download process is consolidated: users check boxes for the clients they want, and all are downloaded and installed one by one.

As of the beta launch, the only clients available are Windows Live Mail Desktop (an e-mail client that consolidates multiple Web-based and POP3 accounts) and Windows Live Messenger (an IM, voice, and video chat client for consumers). Checkboxes also appear for Windows Live Mail (Web-based e-mail) and Spaces (blogging and social networking); if users check these boxes, they are taken to home pages where they can set up a mail account or Spaces blog, respectively.

Essentials will soon offer users the Windows Live Toolbar, which adds features to Internet Explorer, including links to Windows Live services. It might also include other software, such as a search client (tentatively named Windows Live Search for the Desktop) that will consolidate search results from the user's PC, networked resources, and the Internet; and Windows Live Writer, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) tool for creating and posting blog entries.

Essentials also installs utilities that enable users to maintain their Windows Live software via Microsoft Update, and a Windows Live Dashboard client (to be released later) will alert users when software updates are available.

Essentials could become an effective way for Microsoft to distribute and promote Windows Live software and services while sidestepping antitrust regulators. The company would almost certainly face antitrust complaints, especially in Europe, if it bundled Windows Live clients with Vista or a future OS, or if it signed distribution deals with OEMs, as Google has done with Dell to distribute its Google Pack (a combination of Google and third-party software). Although Microsoft has not revealed distribution details for Essentials, it could be one of several default home pages for Internet Explorer 7 or could appear in the default Windows Welcome screen, which appears the first time a user boots Vista. (This Welcome screen can be changed by OEMs.)

The Windows Live Essentials beta is available only to users on Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6.x; Internet Explorer 7 will be supported in the next beta, which is expected in October. The site is essentials.live.com.

Search Launch Changes Little

The Windows Live Search Web search site has emerged from beta testing and changed its name to Live Search (dropping the "Windows" brand). However, although Live Search has a different interface than its predecessor, MSN Search, it uses the same underlying search technology and advertising platform.

Despite interface updates and repeated attempts to improve the quality of its results, Microsoft's search offering has lost ground against competitors in the last year. According to the most recent statistics from comScore, Microsoft's search engine had a 12.8% share among U.S. users in July 2006, down from over 15% in the year before; Yahoo's share also dropped, but remains around 30%, while Google's share increased from approximately 35% to more than 43%. According to an earlier comScore survey, while the overall number of search queries in the second quarter of 2006 grew 30% from the previous year, the number of queries on Microsoft's search site grew only 8%.

As part of the Live Search launch, Live.com, a user-customizable home page that prominently features Live Search, and Live Local Search, Microsoft's mapping and local search site, also shed their beta designations and got some minor feature improvements. Most notably, Live Local Search has changed its name from Windows Live Local, features Live Search more prominently (e.g., users can conduct Web searches from the site), and has added white pages listings, enabling users to look up phone numbers and addresses of individuals.

Live Search is at search.live.com.

Live.com is at www.live.com

Live Local Search is at local.live.com.