Designed to look for information on user hard drives, the yet-unnamed search application has now been revealed by Microsoft executives to include Internet search capabilities.
Microsoft's first self-generated foray into the search industry has been under wraps for some time at the company's Redmond, Wash.-based headquarters.
"We will be able to search beyond the web in a very fast fashion," Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's vice president, said at an annual analysts meeting.
Microsoft's preparation for taking over the search engine industry comes on the heels of the purchase of Lookout in July, a program that enables users to search their Outlook browsers for email, contact names, attachments and other information.
Mehdi's statement is being called Microsoft's first concrete acknowledgement that it is aiming to capture not only the software search market but also the very same web-based territory that rivals Google, Yahoo and MSN have conquered in previous years.
"We have made a lot of progress," Mehdi said, although he did not offer an official launch date for the new search platform.
