Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told a gathering of more than 100 chief executives yesterday that advances in search technologies -- including the company's recent desktop search software -- will dramatically change the way people find, catalogue and track information.

"Search has given us a glimpse of what's possible," Gates said, speaking at the ninth annual Microsoft CEO Summit in Redmond. "But we need to take this a lot further -- we need to get very direct answers."

Gates' comments come amid increasing competition with Google, which dominates the market with about twice as many search queries as Microsoft's MSN division and its own desktop search tool. Gates did not refer yesterday to his competitor's lead. But he did say that search technology, while hot, is still in its early stages.

On average, Gates said, it takes someone about 11 minutes to find the information they are looking for on the Internet. And while that's relatively fast compared with information retrieval techniques five years ago, Gates said searching for information is still very much a "treasure hunt."

Addressing top executives from Best Buy, Credit Suisse Group, Geico and other corporations, Gates explained how search technologies now allow computer users to get answers to specific questions. For example, he showed how a computer user could type a direct question into the MSN search engine to determine the population of India or the nutritional value of spinach.

"Today, we cover about one-quarter of the things that people are interested in, and we can give very direct answers," said Gates, who plans to add sports, movies, stock quotes and other information. "We are going to get that up to a higher and higher percentage."
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busin...html?source=rss

thanks abhishek..feels great to read about microsoft and gates :smt001
inspiring ....dont u agree

Saw this old thread of man whose company is threatening to sue Abhishek and his domain in sunsigns by Abhishek himself

Amanush... y do u take everything in the wrong sense.... each person has some pros and cons... similar in business... we dont hold anything personal against Bill Gates or Microsoft. if we do not like a certain thing in a person, we dont ignore him, do we? search technology becomes better, isnt it good for us? bullying on the other hand is an altogether different issue.
hope u understand the difference. appreciate the better things in life.