Start pages do have revenue

A few blogs — Richard MacManus and others — have pointed to my post from Monday as “confirmation” that Live.com is the new homepage, and it must be true because a future employee of Microsoft said it. There could be a little more research from the publishers, but this is the wild west known as the blogosphere after all.

My information about Live.com came from the Windows Live launch last November when Bill Gates mentioned it on stage. The news is not new, and the products discussed such as Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista haven’t even launched yet.

As for comments about losing advertising revenue by serving up a search box, remember that search is a revenue-generating activity for each provider and some companies make money from their personalized home pages by selling special default feeds such as placing ESPN for sports content and not Fox.

In short: the best way to confirm that a new feature exists is when the code gets locked for release and until then many things are possible. The past can hold some queues but just like a company reorganization — just happened at Windows Live — things can change.