MSN Newsbot to take on Google News
MS-Watch | at | by Mike
Microsoft has begun beta testing in Europe an automated news service called 'MSN Newsbot.' But Newsbot has no connection to MSNBot. On Monday, Microsoft's MSN division began beta testing an automated news service, called "MSN Newsbot" that looks and works like archrival Google's Google News service (which also is in beta). MSN made the beta available to consumers in the U.K., France, Italy and Spain.
The Newsbot technology was developed by the MSN Search team, according to Karen Redetzki, MSN product manager. Like Google News, which scours 4,500 online news sources for the latest stories and compiles them automatically, MSN Newsbot scans "over 4,000 news sources," according to the "About" page on the MSN service. MSN is working with online news aggregator Moreover Technologies and Microsoft's Research division on the new service.