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Microsoft is trying a different approach in enterprise search, the software that companies use to let people find documents on their Web sites and corporate Intranets. The company this morning said it's coming out with a new server program that essentially takes the search functionality from its SharePoint Server product and offers it as a free download.

It's called Search Server Express.

Now for the caveats: The big limitation is that it can only run on a single computer server. Companies that want to use Search Server Express with a collection of server hardware would need to opt for Microsoft's higher-end SharePoint products, or competing software/hardware combinations. The other major catch is that Search Server Express requires Microsoft's Windows Server operating system.

Microsoft is hoping to get attention by offering features that would otherwise be available only in costlier enterprise search systems, such as unlimited document indexing and the ability to tune the relevance of the results that people receive when they make queries.

So what's the company's strategy here? Jared Spataro, Microsoft group product manager for enterprise search, said the idea is to get people to start using one capability of SharePoint, hoping that it convinces them to pay money for the additional capabilities.

Microsoft's competitors in this area include Google, which sells its own enterprise search appliance. Matt Rosoff, an analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft, said he suspects that a part of Microsoft's motivation here is to try to keep Google from getting more market share.

"They've seen what Google is doing in the consumer space, and they're looking at Google encroaching in the enterprise," Rosoff said. "Free is pretty hard to compete against."