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Microsoft Opening APIs To MSN

By David Utter

A signature part of the forthcoming Microsoft Professional Developers Conference will see some MSN applications open for development, including MSN Search.

Google may not be talking to Cnet News, but Microsoft certainly is. Never one to ignore a golden opportunity for positive press, Microsoft told Cnet of its plans to let third parties have [url=\"http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Web+plan+takes+aim+at+Google/2100-1007_3-5855244.html\"][u]access[/u][/url] to MSN APIs and build upon work performed by Microsoft developers.

The so-called Web 2.0 model has developers build applications utilizing existing web platforms, in this case the MSN portal. Google has done this by opening application programming interfaces to its popular Maps service. Yahoo and eBay have made similar initiatives available for their platforms.

Microsoft won't be discussing specifics until the conference begins in Los Angeles next week. Company executives told Cnet that MSN Search would be one of the applications open to third-party developers.

This approach differs greatly from that taken with the companies big revenue generators, the Windows operating system and the Office productivity suite. Redmond has been zealous in guarding its technology, and recently filed a second appeal against a European Commission decision that would force it to open parts of its source code to open source developers.

[url=\"http://www.applicationdevelopmentnews.com/\"]source: Application Development News[/url]

I'm looking forward to this if I ever get another interest in MSN addons. I'll be making lotsa msn addons if I do. I know that sounds really strange because I have yet to release a single program http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/style_emoticons//unsure.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':unsure:\' />

i can still hook ! /cry.gif">http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/style_emoticons//cry.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':(\' /> lol. ill be interested to see what they open up, if they are naming msn search, im going to guess it will be more or less products that are under competition to other companies, maybe nothing big, but products like that, in hopes that developers may help bring more traffic to their stuff.

Personally I think Microsoft is doing this because Yahoo and Google already do, and if any of you have been reading the competition stuff between the big three, they're getting pretty serious about owning the search market.