The search engine executive at Microsoft charged with building a paid-search technology to compete with Yahoo and Google has quietly left the company after less than four months on the job, according to a report by CNET´s News.com.
Paul Ryan, the former chief technology officer at Overture Services, was hired at MSN on Oct. 20, 2003, just weeks after Yahoo finalized its $1.63 billion acquisition of the commercial search groundbreaker Overture, which started as GoTo.com. Ryan’s appointment as general manager in charge of “the monetization of MSN Search,” according to Microsoft, was seen as a coup in the company’s efforts to build a formidable rival to No. 1 search engine Google and replace its current commercial search partner, Overture.
According to the CNet report Microsoft spokeswoman Crystal Duncan confirmed that Ryan left on Feb. 12. “It’s business as usual, his departure was unrelated to the company’s emphasis on search technology,” Duncan said.
In the race to become the top search engine delivering the most relevant and the most profitable search results (a strange relationship of contraries) this may deliver a large blow to the MSN Search juggernaut, in their chase to catch Google and Yahoo.
Yahoo has recently introduced their new Yahoo Search Engine, which mysteriously is yet to serve Overture advertisements in their search results. Google has become one of the Internet´s largest advertising networks with its Google AdWords keyword targeted advertising. With other search engines, Amazon.com, and social networking projects on the trail of the big three (Yahoo, Google, and MSN)- this current MSN news may become a quite large issue in the (forgive me) SEARCH ENGINE WARS.
