BEIJING, China – April 21, 2008 – Researchers from Microsoft Research are helping to shape the evolution of the Internet for more than 1.5 billion Netizens through new discoveries being presented this week in Beijing. Detailed in twelve research papers from Microsoft Research labs around the world, these innovations cover areas such as search, user-interface, mobility, privacy and security and will be presented to a thousand academics, researchers, decision-makers, technologists, and business executives at the 17th International World Wide Web (WWW 2008) Conference.

The WWW Conference, held for the first time in mainland China since its inception in 1994, holds great significance this year as China’s Netizen population surpassed that of the U.S. for the first time. Themed "One World, One Web", WWW 2008, held from April 21st to 25th, will explore how Web access is moving from the desktops, to cell phones and TV screens providing more ubiquitous access for people. Presenting seven papers during the conference, Microsoft Research Asia, Microsoft’s fundamental lab in Asia Pacific, is playing a unique role creating technologies that will improve the user experience across all three of these screens in a region with significant online growth prospects. In Asia, Internet usage has grown by 346.6% since 2000 but has only reached 13.7% of the population compared to the 71.1% penetration rate in North America .

"The WWW Conference is the world's premier venue for presenting research that tackles the biggest problems facing the continued evolution of the Internet," commented Rick Rashid, Senior Vice President of Microsoft Research. "Presenting our research findings at international conferences such as WWW goes to the heart of Microsoft Research’s culture to openly share our results with the world’s foremost experts and to move technology in new directions. By actively participating in WWW, we are helping to build a stronger web for the world and a better user experience for billions of internet users."

Technologies outlined in the twelve papers from Microsoft Research include "iRobot: An Intelligent Crawler for Web Forums" that helps users better search and navigate Internet forums; "CompoWeb: A Component-Oriented Web Architecture" which improves usability, security, and privacy for the increasingly popular Mashups; "Learning to Rank Relational Objects and Its Application to Web Search" which looks at the relationship between objects to improve the ranking of search results; and "Planetary-Scale Views on a Large Instant-Messaging Network" which describes a landmark study of anonymized data capturing a month of high-level communication activities within Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft’s instant-messaging system.

In addition to the twelve papers, Dr. Harry Shum, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Live Search product development, will deliver a keynote on the new, emerging technologies that are defining next generation search technology. Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon, Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia and WWW 2008 General Vice Chair, will deliver a presentation addressing how the web is transforming commerce and how researchers from Microsoft Research Asia will also host a special session on the future of the Internet in China.

"In Asia, the impact of the Internet has been profound. More than half a billion people have been drawn to the opportunities created by this technology, including innovations which are building knowledge economies throughout the region," said Hon. "As head of Microsoft Research Asia, it gives me great pleasure to bring one of the world’s foremost international research conferences to Asia during our lab’s tenth year anniversary."

As the internet has evolved, so have threats to internet security and personal privacy. During WWW 2008, Katharine Bostick, a senior attorney at Microsoft, will participate in a panel discussion on Internet security during which she will detail Microsoft’s efforts to build a safer and more secure world wide web for all to play, work, and learn in.

Over the years, Microsoft Internet security efforts have focused on fostering partnerships with industry and government organizations to do everything from defend against Internet fraud and security threats to protecting children from online dangers. Recently, Microsoft has been working with governments throughout the Asia Pacific region to build stronger privacy laws to protect nascent internet populations.

Working with industry and academic partners, Microsoft, a platinum sponsor of WWW 2008, has played a critical role in helping bring the conference to Beijing. Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon is serving as WWW 2008 General Vice Chair. In addition, Dr. Wei-Ying Ma, Principal Researcher, Research Area Manager, MSR Asia, who is one of the WWW 2008 Program Chairs along with five other colleagues from Microsoft who will be Refereed Paper Tracks Chairs.

Papers to be presented by Microsoft Research during WWW 2008 include:

• Learning to Rank Relational Objects and Its Application to Web Search: Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu, Xu-Dong Zhang, De-Sheng Wang, Wen-Ying Xiong, Hang Li.
• Ranking Refinement and Its Application to Information Retrieval: Rong Jin, H. Valizadegan, Hang Li.
• iRobot: An Intelligent Crawler for Web Forums: Rui Cai, Jiang-Ming Yang, Wei Lai, Yida Wang, Lei Zhang.
• Recommending Questions Using the MDL-based Tree Cut Model: Yunbo Cao, Huizhong Duan, Chin-Yew Lin.
• Improving Relevance Judgment of Web Search Results with Image Excerpts: Zhiwei Li and Lei Zhang.
• Learning Transportation Mode from Raw GPS Data for Geographic Application on the Web: Yu Zheng, Like Liu, Longhao Wang, Xing Xie.
• Planetary-Scale Views on a Large Instant-Messaging Network: Eric Horvitz.
• Using the Wisdom of the Crods for Keyword Generation: Panayiotis Tsaparas, Kannan Achan, Rakesh Agrawal.
• Mining the Search Trails of Surfing Crowds: Identifying Relevant Websites from User Actibity: Mikhail Bilenko.
• A Combinatorial Allocation Mechanism with Penalties for Banner Advertising: Vahab Mirrokni.
• Trust-based Recommendations Systems: an axiomatic approach: Reid Anderson, Jennifer Chayes, Uriel Feige, Abraham Flaxman, Adam Kalai, Vahab Mirrokni.
• CompoWeb: A Component-Oriented Web Architecture: Rui GUO, Bin B. Zhu, Min FENG, Aimin PAN, and Bosheng ZHOU.

About Microsoft Research

Founded in 1991, Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Its goals are to enhance the user experience on computing devices, reduce the cost of writing and maintaining software, and invent novel computing technologies. Researchers focus on more than 55 areas of computing and collaborate with leading academic, government and industry researchers to advance the state of the art in such areas as graphics, speech recognition, user-interface research, natural language processing, programming tools and methodologies, operating systems and networking, and the mathematical sciences. Microsoft Research currently employs more than 800 people in six labs located in Redmond, Wash.; Cambridge, Mass.; Silicon Valley, Calif.; Cambridge, England; Beijing, China; and Bangalore, India. Microsoft Research collaborates openly with colleges and universities worldwide to enhance the teaching and learning experience, inspire technological innovation, and broadly advance the field of computer science. More information can be found at http://www.research.microsoft.com.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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