MSN Eyes Google.

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Author: Rupley, Sebastian

IN A MOVE THAT MAY LEND credence to rumors that Microsoft is increasingly interested in competing with Google, the company has made available a free, prerelease version of the MSN Toolbar. The new offering serves up search and navigation features and is similar to toolbars that both Google and Yahoo! offer. The prerelease version is available at http://toolbar.msn.com. The toolbar provides one-click access to several MSN services, including Hotmail, MSN Messenger, MSN Search, My MSN, and a customizable popup blocker.

MSN Toolbar will go through several updates in the coming months, says Karen Redetzki, MSN Product Manager. Even though it offers new search features, it is not the dedicated search engine that Microsoft is planning to deliver later this year.

To build out that search engine, Microsoft currently has its own bot, MSNBot, indexing the Web. A prerelease version of the search engine is available at http://beta.search.msn.com. A future version of MSN Toolbar will almost certainly be closely tied to the search engine.

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By Sebastian Rupley