They definitely have a market, because they have the traffic. Search marketers can't seem to get enough traffic. I don't know anyone who is not going to try MSN.

Search engines compile a lot of data on what we search for and much of what we search for is personal. Many people fear that the government wants to do data mining. It'll be interesting to see how much of all this ultimately becomes a political issue.

They have a sizable amount of traffic. Advertisers will want to reach that audience, and buying through MSN is going to be the only way to do that.

Microsoft's problem is that despite having all this stuff, they haven't really budged their share of search.

Every major search engine has some form of paid placement.

While the search marketing space grows, it's hard to get good people trained, If they're good, others want to poach them.