We’re excited to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company. Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research. More importantly, Powerset brings to Live Search a set of talented engineers and computational linguists in downtown San Francisco. This is a great team with a wide range of experience from other search engines and research organizations like PARC (formerly Xerox PARC).
Category Archives: Finance
Buyers’ shift to small cars pushes
June 2, 2008 – 4:42 am
DETROIT — June auto sales weren’t as bad as some predicted, but the situation facing the automakers remains grim: Buyers want gas-miser cars, and not even car-heavy Toyota has enough of those to satisfy demand.
Total auto sales were down 18.3% compared with June 2007, coming in at 1.45 million, according to Autodata. Sales could have been higher, said officials at General Motors, (GM) Ford (F) and Toyota, (TM) if the automakers had enough four-cylinder engines.
“For the last 120 days, at least, with higher availability on some of our cars and crossovers, we would have sold more vehicles,” says Mark LaNeve, GM head of North American sales and marketing. The industry could have sold about 40,000 more cars in June, and GM would have captured 8,000 to 10,000 more buyers. “We have been outright constrained in some cases where dealers were just out of cars. Certainly, we would have done better.”
Once gas prices topped $3.50 a gallon, the automakers said, the shift away from gas guzzlers accelerated. But sales have been hurt by the weak housing market and concerns about the economy.
Partial walkouts at Kia Motors Corp
May 2, 2008 – 4:39 am
Partial walkouts at Kia Motors Corp. and South Korea’s largest carmaker, Hyundai Motor Co., were the centerpiece of a one-day strike by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions to protest U.S. beef imports and the pro-business policies of President Lee Myung-bak. U.S. beef returned to South Korean store shelves Tuesday under a new import agreement.
About 20,000 workers at Kia Motors Corp. stopped work for two hours, union officials said. Some 13,000 other Kia workers on the night shift and about 45,000 union members at Hyundai Motor Co. planned to do the same later in the day.
Record gas prices
April 2, 2008 – 4:40 am
Record gas prices and declining trade-in values for big trucks and SUVs hit truck sales hard while major automakers, including Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), struggled to keep up with demand for some popular smaller cars and hybrids.
GM was the industry’s main surprise after a sale featuring zero percent financing for six years allowed the U.S. automaker to avoid losing sales leadership in the month to Toyota.
In a reversal of recent trends, Toyota trailed GM in June with a 21-percent sales decline, reflecting a 31-percent drop in sales of its trucks like the Tundra pickup.
Equally damaging, sales of Toyota’s hybrids including the market-leading Prius hybrid dropped 27 percent as dealer inventory ran short of demand.
The Japanese auto maker sees U.S. vehicle sales hitting bottom this year, with a modest recovery in 2009, and a substantial rebound in U.S. auto sales in 2010 and beyond.
Obama Shifts on Welfare Reform
March 2, 2008 – 4:35 am
ABC News’ Teddy Davis and Gregory Wallace Report: Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul “slashed the rolls by 80 percent.” Obama leaves out, however, that he was…
Obama’s Dignity Teddy Davis and Gregory Wallace report for ABC News: Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul “slashed the rolls by 80 percent.” Obama leaves out,
Going to Lose Your Belly Fat
February 2, 2008 – 4:33 am
1. Many so-called “health foods” are actually cleverly disguised junk foods that can actually stimulate you to gain more belly fat… yet the diet food marketing industry continues to lie to you so they can maximize their profits.
2. Ab exercises such as crunches, sit-ups, and ab machines are actually the LEAST effective method of getting flat six pack abs. We’ll explore what types of exercises REALLY work in a minute.
3. Boring repetitive cardio exercise routines are NOT the best way to lose body fat and uncover those six pack abs. I’ll tell you the exact types of unique workouts that produce 10x better results below.