The MSN Search group announced on its team blog last week that it has added "about a million" new Instant Answers (also known as "direct answers") to its service. The MSN folks are expanding MSN Instant Answer responses into new area, ranging from sports to weather to government officials. Instant Answers are the fact boxes that appear atop MSN search results and below the sponsored ads, typically linking users to a related Encarta entry or category of the MSN database. Some early testers have criticized MSN Instant Answers, citing the service's inability to respond to basic queries, such as the name of the 1979 U.S. Vice President or a list of Nobel Prize winners.