A less developed version of the MSN Search service, which Microsoft began making available for public tryouts in July, was simply a search box without special features or functionality that returned results grabbed from an index of about one billion documents, a Microsoft official says.

But the beta version released on Thursday has an index of over five billion documents and lets users narrow and customise their queries in a variety of ways, says Justin Osmer, an MSN Search product manager.

The MSN Search service is expected to be ready in final release in 2005. and will eventually replace the search engine technology that Microsoft currently licenses from Yahoo to power the MSN portal's search feature, he says.

"Our overall goal with this beta, and eventually with the final product, is to help users find whatever information they want faster," Osmer says.

Charlene Li, a Forrester Research analyst, has tested the search engine and described the relevance of its results as being "not fantastic" but definitely adequate and "on par" with its competitors. The most significant thing is that Microsoft is getting close to having its own search engine, which will be the foundation for future enhancements, new features and integration with existing Microsoft products and services, Li says.

"It is good enough. It gets the job done. And it puts Microsoft at the table to play with everybody else," Li says. "The most important thing is Microsoft owns it, and because of that the company can do lots of different things with it going forward."

Some of the MSN Search beta service highlights are its ability to:

* return specific answers, such as facts, definitions, conversions and calculations, to certain direct questions by tapping content from Microsoft's Encarta encyclopaedia;

* launch specific actions from the MSN Search interface, such as listening to song samples and buying and downloading songs from MSN Music;

* narrow search results according to various parameters, such as geographic location, news content, language, images, Internet domains, Web site address and Web pages' popularity or creation date.

Overall, the MSN Search beta service's features are generally available from other search engines, and Osmer acknowledges that Microsoft is hard at work to enhance these features and add new ones. "We view this beta as just a starting point," he says.

A desktop search tool will be unveiled before the end of the year, and the plan is to have it tightly integrated with this search engine, to let users look for information as seamlessly as possible in their PCs and the Internet, Osmer adds.

A beta version of the MSN Messenger instant messaging client already has a search bar built into it, an integration that "we will continue to expand upon as well," Osmer says. A comparison shopping feature would not be out of the question, he states.

Also likely is enabling users to access the MSN Search service from wireless devices, Osmer says. "It is certainly our intention to make search available, no matter where our customers are, and where that information may reside, so down the road mobile devices could certainly be a part of the strategy," he says.

With the unveiling of this beta service, Microsoft continues its march towards the front lines of the search engine battles, as it attempts to snatch search users and search advertising revenue away from its competitors. The beta of MSN Search is available at http://beta.search.msn.com.