The Seattle Times reports that Microsoft has launched a brand new Live Search News portal that combines video, news, and video.

It’s not that different than Google News, WebmasterWorld member Robert Charlton says. He notes that Google feels more like a “big city newspaper” than Live Search News, but notes that there’s some localized news on Live Search’s end. (I’m still in Puerto Rico so I see no local news at all and I may be at a disadvantage with my reporting, though forum members do believe that it’s being rolled out in different geographic locations at different times.)

The other big observation is that Microsoft is feeding news releases whereas Google is offering secondary and tertiary news sources where applicable. That said, many forum members believe that Microsoft has much work to do to make it a comparable service to Google News.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.