The tech giant announced yesterday that it has acquired the company Lookout Software LLC. According to eWeek this company offered "add-on to Microsoft Outlook that indexes and searches e-mail as well as desktop files." The key here is that Lookouts software allowed users to search for desktop files. With all the advance search capabilities being built for Longhorn this acquisition might just speed up the release for the public beta.
MSN continues to delve deeper into search with the acquisition of a 6-month-old startup focused on desktop search. Microsoft Corp.'s Internet division announced late Thursday that it has bought Lookout Software LLC, the maker of a software add-on to Microsoft Outlook that indexes and searches e-mail as well as desktop files. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
While not directly addressing how they will use Lookout's technology, MSN officials said it is part of the company's increased investment in search and its efforts to make results—whether from the Web or from the desktop—more relevant for users. "Our vision is to take search beyond today's basic Internet search services to deliver direct answers to people's questions, and help them find information from a broad range of sources," Yusuf Mehdi, MSN's corporate vice president, said in a statement.
News source: eWeek
