MSN Search Goes Live

The Register is reporting that MSN is starting to use its own homegrown technology for its search engine, starting today, replacing a previous agreement with Yahoo! From the Register:

MSN search allows you to search the web, news, images or Encarta - Microsoft's encyclopedia. MS previously charged for access to Encarta content. With Search Builder, you can specify the language, country or region of the website you are seeking. You can also adjust three bars, like a graphic equaliser, controlling how recently the page was updated, how popular the site is and whether it is an exact or approximate word match.

Also Microsoft says the document index is updated more frequently, every two days, compared to the industry norm of every two weeks.