LONDON--Microsoft is stepping up efforts to improve online search, where it considerably lags market leader Google, by establishing a three-center research facility in Europe, it said on Thursday.
Microsoft, whose efforts to buy search company Yahoo Inc have been rebuffed, said it would increase investment and recruitment in the region by opening a new European search technology center with hubs in Paris, London and Munich.
"We need to draw on the world's smartest, most creative minds. Increasingly, we are finding the talent we need here in Europe," Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in a statement ahead of a Paris news conference.
Software giant Microsoft currently invests more than $600 million in research and development in Europe, a figure it said on Thursday was growing, without revealing how much more it planned to spend.
Microsoft has about 2 percent of the European online search market, according to Web research firm ComScore, compared with Google's 79 percent.
It recently bought UK mapping specialist Multimap, Germany- based price-comparison site Ciao and Norwegian enterprise search company FAST as it tries to establish a niche in particular search areas used for such purposes such as shopping.
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