In the course of doing research for a client, I'm now experiencing what I've heard so many others complain about: Phone Prison. I used to believe that 'phone prison' was simply an older person's way of saying that working through a phone system took too much effort. Now I realize that there really are Phone Prisons - systems designed to keep you locked out from actually talking to a person!!!
This project has been difficult in terms of making a basic 'strategic partnership' request to the four major search engines. Google, thankfully, has a pretty straight forward process. You simply fill out a form on their contact us website. Yahoo is a little more difficult to figure out, but you simply go to http://corpdev.yahoo.com. MSN, as with so many things related to Microsoft, is a nightmare. I finally called their tech support and asked them - and even they had no way of helping me get in touch with anyone at MSN (that wasn't in tech support).
C'est la vie...