Live.com from MSN to take on Google
New Delhi: Microsoft has launched Live.com its new search engine that takes on the king of search engines Google.

Live.com has a personalised virtual globe programme which gives instant traffic directions to various locations. With its image search one can enlarge or shorten image display while the academic search finds journals by date, author and even conference. The web search has an option to choose how much information one wants to see on the searched sites.

Under the Live umbrella, Microsoft plans to tackle Google which is entering the mail and chat domain in which Hotmail and Yahoo have a monopoly. The Google's blogspot and Orkut will also be a target through Live Spaces which has features such as whom to allow to view your space and whom not to allow.

However, Live.com's slow speed is attracting criticism from all over cyberspace. MSN search has been renamed as Live search. Since about 20 pc of a search engine's queries are local, Microsoft plans to capitalise on the local market.

Another Live feature is One Care which allows free download of anti-virus software. One Care can also defrag your system all for free.
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Yahoo! starts new e-mail service
San Francisco: Yahoo! Inc is offering an upgraded e-mail service available to all users in the US and 18 countries.

The new version, introduced as a test last September, displays previews of e-mail and lets users drag messages into folders similar to a desktop application.

Yahoo's upgrades follow its 2004 acquisition of Oddpost, a San Francisco-based startup whose mail service resembled desktop software such as Microsoft Outlook.

Visitors to Yahoo Mail increased 19 pc to 254.9 million in July, according to ComScore Networks Inc, which tracks internet use. Visitors to Microsoft's MSN Hotmail rose 8 pc to 234.1 million, while Time Warner Inc's AOL dropped 4 pc to 55.6 million.

The new version of Yahoo Mail also displays information on schedules stored on Yahoo's calendar site, letting users review and create appointments without leaving the e-mail screen.

Yahoo users will be given the opportunity to opt in to the upgraded site and can revert to the old version, Diamond said.
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Ford Motor offers buyouts
Detroit: Ford Motor Co. is planning go offer buyout packages of up to $140,000 to all of the more than 75,000 workers at its U.S. plants, according to the United Auto Workers union and the number of workers the automaker will cut from its payroll in coming months will depend on its success in getting workers to accept the new round of buyout offers, which are modeled on a package offered by larger rival General Motors Corp.
The company will soon layout a revised turnaround plan in response to slumping sales.

Two top Ford executives, including America's chief operating officer Anne Stevens, have resigned a week after Alan Mulally took over as chief executive of the company.

Ford shares closed down more than 1 percent, after trimming earlier losses due to a report that the automaker's own forecasts pointed to a loss of up to $9 billion this year.

In January, Ford had said it would cut up to 30,000 jobs and close 14 plants by 2012, but then said in July that slowing sales of its once highly profitable line of pickup trucks and SUVs had led it to move faster.
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