Microsoft plans to open up access to MSN and other portals

Microsoft plans to open up access to MSN and other portals

Microsoft is taking some big steps to take on the power of Google. They are seeking help from third party developers to make add-ons for their public portals. Like Google, they plan to offer APIs so that independent developers can make their own utilities to add functionalities to portals like MSN to make them more interesting for the end users.

The company would be releasing more details on their plans at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles next week. MSN Search is going to be the main product for these APIs as the company steps up their offense against the Google Search Engine. Google has made great use of this user support as a lot of add-ons add a lot of value to their excellent products.

The concept is popularly called Web 2.0 or the programmable Web and it is used to add more value to the existing web projects. Firefox provides extensions and Opera web browser provides UserJS, which let users add extra functions to existing sites. Google Map is one of the most widely hacked up web-based application with lot of third party tools and services available making use of the features of Google Maps.

However, Microsoft cannot do it as freely as Google does. They are very much dependent on their services for making money. Unlike Microsoft, Google’s source of income is based on the web based advertising modules they provide to web publishers.