Cheers to our member BigBoy for posting this news on Google getting sidetracked in favour of a Microsoft based search engine in our Back Page News forum.
From Aaron Wall at Thread Watch comes word that MSN Live is now powering Alexa"s (update: AND A9"s) search results instead of Google, the previous partner: Alexa Powered by Microsoft.
Alexa results were previously Google results informed by user data from the Alexa toolbar + a number of post-search refinement buttons.
The Alexa toolbar"s gotten Alexa a bad rap from privacy advocates, though in function it"s effect on search results is similar to click stream data that Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask may or may not be using in their determinations of relevance.