Microsoft came late to desktop search; it doesn’t intend to make the same mistake with mobile search. The company announced Monday that it has bought MotionBridge, a French maker of "mobile search" technology. The press release didn’t say how much Microsoft paid for the company.

MotionBridge is a search engine for small screens like PDAs or cell phones. Its proposition is that normal search engines don’t list search results optimized for cellphone-sized displays -- they're too small for large lists of results, typing in keywords is tedious, and result descriptions won’t fit on a screen. MotionBridge simplifies tasks, saving time and effort.

It would be hard to say that mobile search is a "hot" technology right now, but most of the major players have some form of it in use, or have plans in the works. Google, for instance, has Google Short Message Service (SMS), which lets a user send a query through a cellphone browser -- say, for a restaurant -- and get a text message answer listing the restaurant’s name, address and phone number, but no link.

Yahoo! has a similar service, but also has a more MotionBridge-like service called Yahoo! Search on Mobile. Both the Yahoo! and MotionBridge offerings are more like a severely streamlined Web browsing experience. The search engine Ask Jeeves is also rumored to be jumping into the mobile search space.

Now with MotionBridge in the fold, Microsoft has a foothold in another aspect of search. It’s also beefing up its search capabilities in Vista, the next-generation operating system, still scheduled for release late this year. Microsoft has been a step or two behind Google in search technology, something even CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted. This latest play may help it pull even, at least in the mobile search market.

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MSN has come up with a new plan to draw users away from Google: free stuff. The company launched a contest on Monday that will give users a chance to win prizes simply by using the service's search engine. Over $1 million in prizes will be available during the months of February, March and April.

Prizes include gift certificates from American Express, Target, REI and Nike. MSN will also be giving away Canon PowerShot digital cameras, HP Digital Entertainment Centers, and Creative Zen Sleek MP3 players.

Three selected winners will additionally be able to donate $10,000, $25,000 and $50,000 to the charities of their choice.

1,200 keywords would be initially linked to prizes this month, with more keywords added in March and April. Users would find out if they were winners in the subsequent result page after entering their search term.

A consistent third in search engine ratings behind market leaders Google and Yahoo, MSN is looking for ways to entice users to make the switch. So far, the company's efforts have been largely unsuccessful, which could be why it is looking towards promotions to increase its visibility.

Yahoo has also considered a similar promotion.

"Whether you want to win a cool prize or give back to your favorite charity, now is a great time to try MSN Search," MSN Search marketing director Lisa Gurry said in a statement.

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Google, the search giant and would-be multi-media advertising enabler, has opened up the bidding on its much-talked-about print venture. AdWords advertisers can now bid for 1 page, 1/2 page and 1/4 page ads in nearly 30 different lifestyle and technology magazines.

The test's purpose, the company says on its site, is to assess AdWords advertisers' demand for space in print publications. Google began a limited test of the service with select advertisers in August.

Titles involved include Hachette Filipacchi books like "Car and Driver" and "Ellegirl;" Future Publishing titles like "Pregnancy" and "Women's Health and Fitness;" and Martha Stewart Omnimedia's "Martha Stewart Kids" and "Martha Stewart Living." For each publication, Google provides data on circulation, ratio of males to females, percentage of college educated readers, average age of reader, and average household income.

"We've been conducting a series of early phase tests to determine how we could bring additional value to print advertising. We are continuing to experiment in this area and are now testing the application of an auction model to print media," the company said in a statement.

Advertisers who wish to participate must submit bids by February 20, and may have their ads included in issues appearing over the summer and fall of 2006.

Similar to Google's AdWords auction process, the company will automatically "discount" bids, so that the winning bidder pays not his maximum bid, but only enough to outbid the next-highest bidder. The company isn't detailing creative specifications, but will send the information to the winning bidders.

Google's experimentation with print has been watched closely over the past several months, as the company seeks to exploit its technology and large advertiser base over a variety of media. The company has also made big moves in radio, buying dMarc Broadcasting earlier this year.

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Google on Monday was set to launch Gmail Chat, which will let users send instant messages with one click from their e-mail account, see when contacts are online and save the chat history like an e-mail message.

The application's Quick Contacts list is synchronized with a user's Google Talk friends list and automatically displays the people a user communicates with most frequently and shows their online status. Clicking on a contact listed as being online opens a chat window in the browsers.

The application lets users save their chat history for easy searching later and click an "off the record" option so that no conversation with that person going forward is saved by either party until they choose to go back on the record.

Gmail Chat is available on Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher and Firefox 1.0 and higher and in the U.S. English interface only.

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FAQ Google's recent legal spat with the U.S. Department of Justice highlights not only what information search engines record about us but also the shortcomings in a federal law that's supposed to protect online privacy.

It's only a matter of time before other attorneys realize that a person's entire search history is available for the asking, and the subpoenas begin to fly. This could happen in civil lawsuits or criminal prosecutions.

That type of fishing expedition is not legally permitted for Web mail providers. But because search engines are not fully shielded by the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act--concocted back in the era of CompuServe and bulletin board systems--their users don't enjoy the same level of privacy.

"Back then, providers were very different animals than they are now," says Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department attorney who teaches computer crime law at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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