Can Microsoft make it in the search game? Most of us remain unsure, however there are those of us that feel that anything that they can bring to the table is simply too little too late.

Asked why he wanted to scale Mount Everest, famed British mountain climber George Leigh Mallory famously replied: “Because it’s there.”

It may seem like Microsoft has scaled every peak, but the software giant is playing an important game of catch-up with Yahoo! and rival Google in the area of search engine advertising. If Microsoft hopes to achieve its vision of services-based applications like Office Live and Windows Live, it needs a way capture ad dollars and produce viable revenue streams. [Read the rest]