Microsoft Corp., which is challenging Google Inc.'s position as the Web's top search provider, said on Thursday it has bought Lookout Inc., which makes software that allows users of Outlook to quickly find information contained in e-mail inboxes and file folders.
Microsoft's MSN Internet division, which is leading the world's largest software maker's efforts to unseat Google, will be taking control of the small software company and its technology for an undisclosed amount, Microsoft said.
Lookout is a small software add-on to Microsoft's Outlook e-mail, contacts and scheduling program that allows users to bypass the search tools provided by Microsoft and sift through e-mail, contacts and other information with keywords. Results are returned nearly instantaneously.
Microsoft, Google and Yahoo Inc. are positioning themselves for major upgrades over the next year as they try to attract more users and advertising revenue by enhancing their search services.
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The competitors have also shifted their attention toward providing search for information buried in computer hard drives.
"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.
Currently, Lookout is available as a free download and was slated to be sold for $30 after an initial preview release period.
As a result of the acquisition, Lookout will no longer be updated or offered on the company's Web site, said Lisa Gurry, lead product manager at MSN. Gurry declined to say whether Microsoft planned to make Lookout a standard feature of MSN or build it into another product or service.
Lookout, a small program that creates an index of the information contained in Outlook in order to quickly sift through and find relevant data, has gained a popular following over the past year.
The closest competitor to Lookout is Bloomba, an e-mail program made by Stata Laboratories Inc., which has a built-in search function that returns results with Google-like speed.
In addition, a hard drive search program called X1 also provides a way to quickly sift through e-mails and other information contained in a hard drive.
Lookout is essentially a two-man operation, led by Mike Belshe and Eric Hahn. Belshe, the software developer who founded Lookout, will join Microsoft as a full-time employee.
Hahn, former Chief Technology Officer for Netscape, will assist in the transition but continue to work with his investment company, Inventures Group.
