The acquisition of Lookout, a two-person company that created an application of the same name for searching Outlook e-mail messages and PC file metadata, will help MSN move quickly to market with tools that let users search information on their local PC as well as the Web. The acquisition fits MSN’s strategy to compete with Google by tying MSN search tools more closely to the PC and to corporate networks where Google has no presence. As part of the acquisition, Lookout cofounder Mike Belshe will join the MSN Search team. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. (For background on MSN's search strategy, see "MSN Reveals Broad Search Intentions" on page 32 of the July 2004 Update.)

First released in 2003, Lookout is an add-on to Outlook 2000 or later that indexes any type of data in Outlook, including e-mail messages, calendar entries, or contacts, enabling users to conduct text-string searches of this data. Users can also command Lookout to index the contents of any other file that Outlook can read, including local .PST files (which contain Outlook data) and information on IMAP mail servers, as well as basic metadata (filename, file extension, size, and modification date) for any file or folder on a PC. Lookout is a .NET application and requires version 1.1 of the .NET Framework. MSN will probably integrate Lookout's search functionality into the MSN Toolbar (an add-on to Internet Explorer) and perhaps into a forthcoming desktop search application. For now, however, Microsoft is offering Lookout as a free download.

MSN has also launched an early technology preview of its Internet search algorithm and is soliciting feedback from users on the relevance of the results. MSN will incorporate the new algorithm into the MSN search site and other tools in 2005.

The technology preview was released at the same time as the MSN Search site underwent a previously announced redesign: the updated site includes an uncluttered initial search page very similar to Google’s, a drop-down menu that limits results to specific MSN properties (for instance, users can search encyclopedia entries from Encarta or stock quotes from MSN Money), and a results page that more clearly identifies advertiser-sponsored results. (For background on the separation of sponsored and nonsponsored results, see "MSN Search Changes Outlined" on page 29 of the May 2004 Update.)

Lookout is available for download at sandbox.msn.com.

The technology preview of the new MSN search algorithm is at techpreview.search.msn.com.

The main MSN search page is at search.msn.com.