I keep getting the annoying nag message from Microsoft MSN Messenger to upgrade and I’ve been ignoring it for months. I’ve currently got the clearly outdated version 7.5 installed, which is no where near bleeding edge enough – so apparently I need to upgrade post haste.

Being the diligent computer user, I uninstalled MSN Messenger 7.5 and the original Windows Messenger that comes with Windows XP Professional. Not knowing the web address for MSN Messenger, I googled msn messenger to be presented with the search result to the left.

After glancing at the advertisement and seeing “Msn Messenger” as the advertising text, I clicked the link expecting to be taken to the Messenger home page on the Microsoft web site. No, that isn’t what I got at all – instead it redirected me to the new Microsoft Live Search web site, with my “MSN Messenger” search already performed. Not only that, they had a nifty JavaScript sliding panel with some useful advertising promoting Microsoft Live Search and telling me that it is “the ducks nuts”. After a few seconds, the useful advertising panel automatically slided away to leave the standard Microsoft Live Search page.

When the biggest software company in the world is required to participate in pay per click advertising on a competitors network to drive traffic to their own search engine, I think it is a pretty sure sign that their competitor is doing something right. I can understand that someone like Google and Yahoo! might advertise on their competitions web sites for pay per click marketing services but I’m yet to see an advertisement on Google or Yahoo! telling me that I should be using their competitors search engines.