MSN chief Yusuf Mehdi showed a prototype of the search software to an audience at its annual Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting. The technology is designed to quickly look through a hard drive, finding all the matches for a word from within documents, emails and even email attachments. The version Mehdi presented also returned Web results on the right side of the page.
The demonstration marked the first time Microsoft has showed off the technology, which Mehdi said would be part of a "service," although he did not offer further details.
Building a search system that looks through typically incompatible files has long been an key goal for Microsoft and a project favoured by chairman Bill Gates.
The PC search technology Mehdi showed allowed a computer user to search within Microsoft's Outlook email client as well as within Windows folders such as "My Documents."
In an interview, Mehdi said that the technology does not require an upgrade to the Windows operating system, but would require software to be downloaded onto a PC. The search is speedy, Mehdi said, because it builds a continual index of the files on the computer.
Microsoft had been expected to combine Web search with local PC search, but many had anticipated the move would come with Longhorn, the next version of Windows. Mehdi did not give specific details, but said the local hard drive search service would come before that launch.
"It will definitely be out before Longhorn," Mehdi said. That said, Longhorn, which includes a new file system, will allow for more powerful searches, he said.
Mehdi said that the company had made a lot of progress in the last few months on the local hard drive search technology. Two weeks ago, Microsoft acquired Lookout Software, a small company with technology for searching email.
"I'm duly humble about the challenge and incredibly optimistic about what we can get done," Mehdi said of Microsoft's prospects in search, noting that the company had built a full Web crawler in 11 months.
Mehdi also offered a sneak peek of the design of the MSN Music service that is scheduled for release later this year, but did not offer details on the service or say when it would launch.
Talkback
Yada Yada. Once again MS copies a useful product from someone else (Sherlock from Apple) which has been around for years and makes it sound like a whole new idea. They really must live in a box - this story isn't even newsworthy.
I don't get the point of this. I can't really ever imagine any situation where I would want to search both my hard drive and the internet for a piece of text.
Even if I did, I would prefer to do a normal Windows search and then go and do a proper internet search on google, MSN results are just too inaccurate and irrelavant sponsored links always sneak in everywhere.
Besides which, there are already several shareware type programs around that can do this if someone really wants. If I really wanted to do this for some reason I would much rather use one of these, just like with CD burning, sure Windows can do it, but the EasyCD Creator program is just so much better with more features and options etc. (despite using the same technology underneath).
Big deal. It takes a piece of text and runs two searches. Well done MS, what a truly novel idea. Give me 5 minutes and I'll write a program that does the same thing.
Actually I won't, because who'd want to use it? Either I'm searching the internet for information or I'm searching my hard drive for a file I've lost. I don't believe I have ever in my life run the same search term on both media.
Also, I wonder if this will be as frighteningly bad as Findfast - a particularly sorry piece of code you got with Office 97, most used for wasting resources and crashing computers, best removed immediately.