Microsoft Says Looked at Connecting Search, Shopping

Microsoft Corp. recently canceled an early stage project looking at ways to combine its Bing Web search with shopping, the company said without explaining why the effort was abandoned.

“The project was a small scale incubation effort to enable a more direct commerce model between customers and brands and merchants,” the largest software maker said in a statement. “The project was recently canceled, but we remain committed to finding new and differentiated ways to enable a richer, more task-oriented approach to e-commerce and online advertising.”