Microsoft has launched a new design on the home page of their Live.com search engine that you can see in the screen shot to your left.
The image has squares that link to different searches (image, map and web). For example, in the screen shot here the tool tip reads “What will you see on your Safari to Botswana?” and links to an “animals in Botswana” search.
I expect that they’ll use other images and search in the future, and this has a lot more to do with the branding of their search assets than any functional change. Because there is a lower cost of entry to having mapping and image search Microsoft’s maps and supplemental search services sometimes have more bells and whistles than Google’s equivalent features and Microsoft is keen to get these in front of people.
As I expected, they are changing up the image. Today I see an Iceland theme.