After less than three years of existence since its launch in March 2008, Singapore’s local search engine Rednano.sg passed away quietly last month in December 2010.

A joint venture between local newspaper giant Singapore Press Holdings Limited (SPH) and Norwegian media group Schibsted ASA (Schibsted), Rednano.sg was a Singapore-centric search engine whose aim was to provide fast and accurate local search results.

A visit to the site shows that it has simply been folded into SPH’s existing online classified business, ST701.

Rednano’s holding statement as of early January 2011

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Microsoft, as you may have heard, is launching a new search engine called Bing.com. What a horrendously silly name. Now I know why.

Dr Qi Lu, President of Microsoft’s Online Services Group just explained 5 mins ago in a worldwide press conference call that the word Bing comes from two Chinese characters – bi and ing (sorry my hanyu pinyin is crap) and that together the two words mean “to be very certain in your answer.” They also want to make bing into a verb!

Microsoft’s strategy to fight Google? It says it’s by building loyalty with users by winning them over one at a time.

Differences vs Google and Yahoo – three key areas:

>>Delivering of best results: type in UPS, and you will get back an UPS link and tracking application, type BT and you get back a customer service number.

>>Bringing new level of organisation: type Bill Gates, you see his pictures, video, speeches,
going deep in four verticals – shopping, travel and local (one more i missed, maybe food?)

Thus the technology approach is more focused on the intent of the user, that is, according to Microsoft, to bring search to “new frontiers”, and to give more satisfying results to users.