MSN exec on PC search

Microsoft plans to come out with a combined system for searching across the PC and the Web even before the release of Longhorn, the next version of Windows, according to Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president in the company's MSN division, who spoke today at a Goldman Sachs Internet conference.

Previously it was assumed that the combined PC/Internet search system wouldn't come until Longhorn's release, expected sometime in 2006.

Here's an Associated Press story based on his comments. And here's the text of what Mehdi said on the topic, transcribed from the webcast earlier today.

"There will be a lot of innovation that we’re going to do in MSN-oriented search and, to be fair, there’s a lot of cross-company investment in search from a number of people, so we are really leveraging the strength and talent from our Microsoft Research group under Rick Rashid. Folks there have spent five, 10 years' investment doing things like image recognition and a number of those things. Things from the Office group, things from advanced user interface group. We will do in MSN Search, starting shortly with a beta and well before Longhorn ships, everything across local PC search, e-mail search, Web search … database search. That will, as far as the consumer is concerned, be an end-to-end system for searching across any data type. We’re going to do work to figure out how and when we add value to Longhorn. There’s no specific plan … nothing to really talk about yet. ... But I think it’s fair to say that we will tackle all of the things that you would expect, even PC search, as part of the MSN effort, well before the Longhorn time-period."