MSN Tests Shopping Search Engine

MICROSOFT'S MSN SHOPPING TEAM IS quietly beta testing a shopping search site, the company confirmed on Friday. The new product--which focuses on price comparison and customer ratings--will face competition from increasingly popular shopping search engines like Shopping.com, Become.com, and Shopzilla, as well as Google's Froogle, Yahoo! Shopping, and America Online's inStore. Justin Osmer, product manager for MSN, said the beta version, available at beta.shopping.msn.com, is very much a work in progress. "Now that the MSN Search engine has launched, we can very quickly innovate on top of it and offer more unique features and services," Osmer said in a statement. MSN's search engine officially launched last month.