Summer Olympics Gain Massive Online Exposure

With unprecedented online exposure, the 2008 Olypics have kicked off in style.

Microsoft's Live Search has added many new features to keep you up to speed with all the latest news from Beijing:

• Live Search News now includes a direct link to Beijing 2008 Olympics news.
• The new xRank Live Search page features an Olympics category where you can track the popularity and news coverage of individual athletes.
• Select Video from the Live Search home page and enter Olympics (or follow this link) to search for Olympics-related videos.
• Enter an Olympic athlete's name in Live Search, and Live Search will display Olympics-related information first, a feature Microsoft calls Athlete Instant Answer.
• Microsoft has also tweaked how searches for Olympics-related keywords work. Search for events such as "swimming" or "USA basketball" and you'll see the latest medal count for the event or the country once the events begin, a feature know as Medal Instant Answer.
• And, to round off the Olympic-friendly repackaging of Live Search for Beijing 2008, Microsoft plans to display various Olympics-related images as backgrounds on the Live Search home page http://www.live.com/.

Google have also introduced some new features for the games, one of them being updates to mobile phones. If you search for any of the olympic sports on your mobile, it will bring up a timetable of events and  results for that sport in addition to the usual results. This feature works in 35 languages. When results start to come in, mobile searches for things like "swimming medals" and "French medal count" will bring up relevant Olympic data.