From the the Merc:
Today Plaxo integrates Yahoo’s search engine directly into the Outlook e-mail program. Under the deal with Yahoo, Plaxo will get paid for channeling people to Yahoo’s search engine. The search box will be placed beside a Plaxo icon that sits atop Outlook.
Plaxo will eventually make Web searching possible from individual e-mails, according to Masonis. Ultimately, he wants Plaxo to search individual words within the e-mails. You would click on the word and Plaxo would do a Web search through Yahoo.
“We’re in Outlook, so we’re effectively within the operating system. We can scan words,” he said. ‘
The deal is significant because it puts Yahoo search directly into one of the most popular e-mail programs. That helps Yahoo leapfrog rival Google, which earlier put its search engine on the bottom of the computer desktop with its Google task bar.
Do you think MSFT is going to let this happen, on *their* desktop, in *their* application, for very long?
(By the way, Google investor and board member Ram Shirram is also an investor in Plaxo…what tangled webs we weave…)