Updated: July 13, 2020 (June 19, 2006)
Charts & IllustrationsSearch in Microsoft Products
Microsoft offers a wide array of services and software specifically for search and has incorporated search functionality into many of its other products. This chart is divided into three categories: platform services used by other software, search tools that run on a PC, and search tools that run on a server.
| Product or Technology | Search Function | How to Get It | Future |
| Platform Services | |||
| Microsoft Search (MS Search) | Core search engine: crawls data sources, creates index. | Microsoft product groups take snapshots of the latest MS Search code and modify it for their purposes to incorporate search into their software. Not used by Microsoft’s Web search service. | Desktop applications will rely on a single version of MS Search included in Vista and available for Windows XP as a separate download. Updates will be delivered via Windows Update and new OS releases. |
| MSN Search | Public Web search service. Does not use MS Search. | Free Web site. Built-in | |
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